Ailina Tsarnaeva, the 24-year-old sister of alleged Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. And, according to police, she allegedly threatened the other woman by telling her, “I have people. I know people that can put a bomb where you live.”
Tsarnaeva appeared in New York Criminal Court on Tuesday. She entered a not guilty plea to two charges of aggravated harassment, a misdemeanor, for allegedly threatening her boyfriend’s 23-year-old former girlfriend, who has not been named in the dispute. (Tsarnaeva’s friends have said the man is her husband, but police have referred to him as her boyfriend.)
Her brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 21, faces the death penalty for his alleged role in the April 2013 dual bombings that killed three people and injured several hundred near the marathon’s finish line. He’s also charged with shooting and killing an MIT police officer days after the attacks while he was on the run. His brother and alleged co-conspirator, Tamerlan, who was 26, was killed during a shootout with cops when, according to federal prosecutors, the younger Tsarnaev ran him over with a car while escaping from police.
For their part, Tsarnaev’s parents, Anzor and Zubeidat, remain in Dagestan, Russia. They have said repeatedly that they want to come back to the United States to visit their son in jail, but so far they have not.