Rolling Stone blasted for putting Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on cover

Rolling Stone magazine is known for controversial covers over the years, but its latest has sparked outrage on the web since it features Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombing suspect. The magazine features a detailed story that it claims explains how Tsarnaev went from university student to an Islamic fundamentalist who allegedly worked with his older brother to plan the bombing.

Rolling Stone unveiled the cover on Tuesday, along with five major revelations from the cover story, written by Janet Reitman. The story is titled “Johar’s World.”

Among the revelations is that on April 19, in order to get Tsarnaev to surrender, the FBI told him that his former wrestling coach made a public plea for him to surrender. An agent told the coach later that his name may have lead Tsarnaev to surrender. The piece also claims that Tsarnaev’s older brother Tamerlan, who was killed in a shootout with police, told his mother in 2008 that he believed there were “two people” inside him and that his mother bleived he may need a psychiatrist.

A friend also told Rolling Stone that Tsarnaev didn’t take Islam lightly, although he had downplayed being a Muslim in school. He also rarely spoke about his troubled home life to friends and he never spoke about 9/11. Although, he did tell a friend once that he thought terrorist attacks were justified after hearing about US drone strikes.

According to Fox News, Rolling Stone hasn’t issued a statement on its editorial decision to put Tsarnaev on the cover. But the magazine is in critics’ crosshairs already, since the magazine had recently had celebrities like Justin Bieber and Johnny Depp on covers.

The comments keep coming on the original blog post as well. Just minutes ago, one Boston woman called it a “slap in the face.” Actor Albert Brooks even tweeted, “Maybe I'm old fashioned but putting the Boston bomber on the cover o[f] Rolling Stone is a terrible idea.”

image: Rolling Stone

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