In an interview for the Associated Press, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said her son told her in a phone call that he and his brother, killed in a police manhunt after the blasts, were innocent.

 

Mr Tsarnaev, who was shot and injured during the manhunt, is currently being held in a prison hospital.

 

Last month's bombings left three people dead and more than 260 others injured.

 

Mrs Tsarnaeva told AP that it was the first conversation she had had with her 19-year-old son since he has been held in custody¹. 

 

He told her he was getting better but was struggling to comprehend what had happened.

 

"He didn't hold back his emotions either, as if he were screaming to the whole world: 'What is this? What's happening?'" she said.

 

"I could just feel that he was being driven crazy by the unfairness that happened to us, that they killed our innocent Tamerlan."

 

The Tsarnaev family has continued to claim the men's innocence² in the bomb attacks, which targeted the finishing line of the Boston Marathon on 15 April.

 

The family, who are ethnic³ Chechen Muslims from Russia, spoke⁴ from an apartment in the Russian republic of Dagestan which reportedly belonged to 26-year-old Tamerlan, who was hit in a shoot-out with police in the aftermath of the bombings.

 

The suspects' father, Anzor, said they bought the apartment in anticipation⁵ of Tamerlan and his family moving to Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan.

 

"All I can do is pray to God and hope that one day fairness will win out, our children will be cleared, and we will at least get Dzhokhar back, crippled, but at least alive,'' he told AP.

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