Body of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev claimed

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  The body of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerian Tsarnaev was reportedly picked up at the Boston Medical Examiners office by a Dyer-Lake Funeral home hearse and brought to the North Attleboro, Mass., funeral home on Commonwealth Ave. early Thursday night.MARK STOCKWELL/THE SUN CHRONICLE

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  Tamerlan Tsarnaev. (AP Photo/The Lowell Sun, Julia Malakie)AP2010

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The body of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was claimed on Thursday.

A representative of the Dyer-Lake Funeral Home in North Attleboro, Mass., confirmed to The Sun Chronicle that Tsarnaev's body was brought to the funeral home from the Boston Medical Examiner's office by one of its hearses.

Local Boston station WFXT reported that the hearse believed to be carrying Tsarnaev's body  was escorted away from the funeral home by police escort late Thursday. Its destination was not immediately known.

Local police were dispatched to the funeral home where media gathered. According to The Sun Chronicle, it is unclear why the funeral home was involved. 

Department of Public Safety spokesman Terrel Harris said a funeral home retained by Tsarnaev's family picked up the 26-year-old's remains. He had no more information.

The medical examiner determined Tsarnaev's cause of death on Monday, but officials said it wouldn't become public until his remains were released and a death certificate was filed. It was unclear on Thursday evening whether the death certificate had been filed.

Tsarnaev's widow, Katherine Russell, who has been living with her parents in North Kingstown, R.I., learned this week that the medical examiner was ready to release his body and wanted it released to his side of the family, her attorney Amato DeLuca said days ago.

Tsarnaev's uncle Ruslan Tsarni, of Maryland, said Tuesday night the family would take the body.

"Of course, family members will take possession of the body," Tsarni said. "We'll do it. We will do it. A family is a family."

Tsarnaev, who had appeared in surveillance photos wearing a black cap and was identified as Suspect No. 1, died days after the bombing.

The April 15 bombing, near the marathon's finish line, killed three people and injured more than 260 others. Authorities said Tsarnaev and his younger brother later killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus police officer and carjacked a driver, who escaped.

Authorities said the Tsarnaev brothers during the gunfight with police set off a pressure cooker bomb and tossed grenades before the older brother ran out of ammunition.

Police said they tackled the older brother and began to handcuff him but had to dive out of the way at the last second when the younger brother, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, drove a stolen car at them. They said the younger brother then ran over his brother's body as he drove away from the scene to escape.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured later, wounded and bloody, hiding in a tarp-covered boat in a suburban Boston backyard. He is in a federal prison and faces a charge of using a weapon of mass destruction to kill.

The Tsarnaev brothers' mother insists the allegations against them are lies.

Three of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's friends, college classmates, were arrested and were accused of helping after the marathon bombing to remove a laptop and backpack from his dormitory room before the FBI searched it.

A top Republican senator on Thursday asked President Barack Obama's administration to explain how one of the students, who's from Kazakhstan, entered the United States without a valid student visa.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in a three-page letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, asked for additional details about the student visa applications for Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, college roommates from Kazakhstan charged with obstruction of justice in the marathon bombing case, and how Tazhayakov was allowed to re-enter the United States in January.

Tazhayakov was a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth when he left the country in December. In early January, his student visa status was terminated because he was academically dismissed by the university.

The third student arrested, Robel Phillipos, was charged with willfully making materially false statements to federal law enforcement officials during a terrorism investigation.

The lawyers for the Kazakh students said their clients had nothing to do with the bombing and were just as shocked by it as everyone else. Phillipos' attorney said the only allegation against him is "he made a misrepresentation."

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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Tsarnaev reportedly on state welfare while he delved into radical Islam

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One of the men behind last week's deadly attack on the Boston Marathon had received Massachusetts welfare benefits until recently -- during the same period that the alienation he apparently felt as a Chechen in America coincided with a growing embrace of radical Islam.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his family were living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits as recently as last year, the Boston Herald reports, though it remains unclear what kind of benefits they were receiving.

State officials confirmed to the newspaper late Tuesday that Tsarnaev, who was killed during a gun battle with police on Friday, was receiving benefits along with his wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, and their 3-year-old daughter.

His younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was captured Friday night and charged with using a weapon of mass destruction. The 19-year-old could face the death penalty if convicted.

The state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services said Tamerlan Tsarnaev's welfare benefits ended in 2012 when the family stopped meeting income eligibility limits. His wife's attorney has claimed Katherine -- who had converted to Islam -- was working up to 80 hours a week as a home health aide while Tsarnaev stayed at home, the newspaper reports.

“The brothers were not receiving transitional assistance benefits at the time of the incident and have not received any transitional assistance benefits this year," Massachusetts Health and Human Services communication director Alec Loftus told the newspaper in a statement. "The Tsarnaevs’ parents are former recipients of transitional assistance benefits, and both Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev received benefits through their parents when they were younger. Separately, Tamerlan and his family received benefits until 2012, when the family became ineligible based on their income.”

The Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance works "to assist low-income individuals and families to meet their basic needs, increase their incomes and improve their quality of life," the agency's website says.

The benefits offered include food assistance, job assistance, emergency shelter, help for victims of domestic violence, cash aid for families with children, emergency assistance for the elderly and disabled.

Loftus declined to specify to the Herald the type and amount of assistance Tsarnaev and his family were receiving.

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