Group: Boston bombing suspect's burial "an awful sneak attack on the people of Virginia"

DOSWELL, Va. A group critical of the Virginia burial of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect wants the body disinterred and sent elsewhere.

The Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force is an activist organization that also opposed establishment of an Islamic school in northern Virginia.

Task force chairman James Lafferty said at a news conference Monday that last week's burial of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a private Muslim cemetery in Caroline County was "an awful sneak attack on the people of Virginia."

Lafferty says federal officials should investigate whether any laws were broken. Local and state officials already are doing so.

Lafferty predicted the site will become a shrine for Islamic jihadists. The group that helped facilitate the burial says it will not allow construction of any sort of monument or shrine.

Tamerlan's uncle, Ruslan Tsarni of Montgomery Village, Md., took responsibility for the body after the slain suspect's wife, Katherine Russell, said she wanted it released to her in-laws.

Tsarni told CBS News that several of his friends attended the burial and they were not hiding the funeral from anyone.

When called by his brother (Tamerlan's father), Tsarni said he told him: "Yes, it's over. He found rest in his own grave."

The news that Tsarnaev had been buried Thursday in a rural Islamic cemetery in Virginia, hundreds of miles from his Massachusetts home, shocked some in the southern community, including officials who said they hadn't been informed.

Imam Ammar Amonette, of the Islamic Center of Virginia, said that his group was never consulted and that Mullen reached out to a separate group, the Islamic Society of Greater Richmond.

"The whole Muslim community here is furious. Frankly, we are furious that we were never given any information. It was all done secretly behind our backs," Amonette said, adding that it "makes no sense whatsoever" that Tsarnaev's body was buried in Virginia.

"It was a total surprise and shock to us," Amonette told CBS affiliate WTVR.

But Caroline County Sheriff Tony Lippa said late Saturday that officials had looked over the paperwork and the interment appears legal. He warned, however, that his small department lacks the money and personnel to provide round-the-clock stakeouts at the cemetery as deputies did Friday night, which passed without incident.

"The Sheriff's Office will offer the same amount of protection - no more and no less - to this site as any other cemetery in Caroline County," Lippa said in a press release.

The body of Tsarnaev, a 26-year-old ethnic Chechen from Russia, had remained at a Massachusetts, funeral parlor since he was killed April 19 in a gunfight with police, days after the bombings that killed three and injured more than 260. Cemeteries in several states refused to accept the remains. With costs to protect the funeral home mounting, police appealed for help finding a place to bury him.

The woman whose actions led to Tsarnaev being buried in Virginia said the anger from local officials, some cemetery neighbors and online critics has been unpleasant, but she has no regrets.

"I can't pretend it's not difficult to be reviled and maligned," Martha Mullen told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Friday. "But any time you can reach across the divide and work with people that are not like you, that's what God calls us to do."

Mullen said she was at a Starbucks when she heard a radio news report about the difficulty finding a burial spot for Tsarnaev.

"My first thought was Jesus said love your enemies," she said.

Then she had an epiphany.

"I thought someone ought to do something about this - and I am someone," Mullen said.

So Mullen, a mental health counselor in private practice and a seminary graduate, sent emails to various faith organizations to see what could be done. She heard back from Islamic Funeral Services of Virginia, which arranged for a funeral plot at the Al-Barzakh cemetery. "It was an interfaith effort," she said.

Mullen, a member of the United Methodist Church, said she was motivated by her own faith and that she had the full support of her pastor.

"Nobody is without sin," she said. "Certainly this was a horrific act, but he's dead and what happened is between him and God. We just need to bury his body and move forward. People were making an issue and detracting from the healing that needed to take place."

The Islamic Society of Greater Richmond didn't respond to an email seeking confirmation that it was involved in the burial.

Some local officials have expressed concern that the grave site could become a target for vandals and a shrine for those who sympathize with Tsarnaev.

Tsarnaev's younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured hours after the gunfight with police and remains in custody.