National Post (National Edition)
No links to Tsarnaev, Canadian’s father says
Both boxers, but ‘he didn’t tell us about friends’
TORON • Vitaly Plotnikov has accepted that his son William converted to Islam, got led astray by radicals and left Canada to fight “jihad” in Dagestan, where he was killed last July by russian security forces.
But in an exclusive interview with the National Post on tuesday, he said he doubted reports claiming his son was connected to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of two brothers believed responsible for the deadly Boston Marathon bombings.
Speaking for over an hour at his suburban toronto condo, Mr. Plotnikov declined to comment about whether the RCMP had asked him about Tsarnaev. But he said officers had seized the computer hard drive his son used, which should reveal his online contacts.
“The thing is that William, when he started to believe in Islam, he became very quiet and inside himself and he didn’t communicate with us. he didn’t tell us about friends,” the father said, speaking through a russian interpreter.
“Maybe they were in contact or communicated online. he didn’t report to me or tell me about his contacts. It’s not that I want to distance myself from Tsarnaev. It’s just that I do my analysis myself. and indeed only God knows.”
Although he has been dead nine months, William Plotnikov’s name surfaced soon after the april 15 Boston Marathon attack as the FBI began asking questions about six months Tsarnaev had spent in Dagestan last year.
Sources familiar with the case said there was no confirmed link between the Canadian and Tsarnaev, who killed four and injured hundreds. But investigators are checking, and there is no shortage of speculation given the similarities in their backgrounds and trajectories.
Both were boxers and immigrants in their early 20s who suddenly became devout Muslims and left north american for Dagestan, a southern russian republic where armed groups are fighting to impose Islamic law.
Mr. Plotnikov said he did not believe they had met through boxing, and he said they were nothing alike, making it doubtful they would have become friends.
He also said his son was in the mountains with the rebels throughout Tsarnaev’s trip to dagestan. “I don’t think that William went into the mountains and informed Tsarnaev, ‘I am here and you can find me there.’ There’s no logic there. This is my opinion,” he said.
Simon Shuster, a Time reporter who visited Utamysh, the village where William had lived, and where he lies buried in a simple graveyard, reported he had showed photos of Tsarnaev to locals but none had recognized him.
Boris Gitman, William’s former Toronto boxing coach, also knew nothing about Tsarnaev. He said he had checked the records of William’s bouts and found no indication the two had fought each other.
despite the lack of evidence they met, Tsarnaev and William seemed to be on parallel paths. A talented boxing champion, William was born in Russia and immigrated to Canada with his parents at age 15. After high school, he went to Seneca College. “My son wanted to serve in the military and we even went to a recruiting centre on yonge Street,” Mr. Plotnikov said. William was keen on joining the special forces, he said. “And it turned out that he went into a special division, but to the mujahedeen [holy warriors].”
According to his father, William converted to Islam in 2009 after meeting a “radical” Toronto cleric. The Plotnikovs were in Florida when William left Canada in September, 2010. He initially stayed in Moscow with a friend who became alarmed by William’s hardline rhetoric.
When Mr. Plotnikov found out, he contacted Russian authorities, who raided the house in dagestan where William was staying and told him to go home. The Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, reported that during questioning, William named Tsarnaev as an online contact.
The Russians subsequently asked the FBI for more information about Tsarnaev, who was described as a “follower of radical Islam” who intended to “join unspecified underground groups” in Russia. But the FBI could find nothing linking him to terrorism and in January, 2012, Tsarnaev flew to Moscow and made his way south to dagestan.
That July, Russian forces engaged a group of armed Islamist fighters near Utamysh. All were killed, including William, who was felled by a bullet to the head. He was 23. days later, Tsarnaev returned to the United States.
Mr. Plotnikov said police were making headway in their investigation into what happened to his son, but he did not know if arrests were coming. “They don’t tell me about their plans,” he said. “I know that there is progress and there is some success.”
He said Canadians needed to do more to flush out extremists. In Russia, he said, the authorities have informant networks, even within mosques. “And here in Canada more informers are needed at these places of gathering.”
The death has been hard on Mr. Plotnikov and his wife, a hard-working, educated and well-liked couple who cannot comprehend how this happened to their son in Canada, where they immigrated to give William a better future.
“Looking back, I regret that I didn’t sit down and ask him for information. I didn’t pay attention to that,” he said. “I thought, it’s like a usual thing, like a person got baptized. So a person became Muslim, what’s wrong? In a horrible dream I wouldn’t even think to see that, that my son, who I didn’t see even killing a fly, that he could take a gun and kill people.”