William Plotnikov

Plotnikov immigrated to Canada in 2005 from Russia at the age of 15, Gitman said about him: "He wasn't comfortable here; he was looking for something and I don't think he found it here." After graduating from high school, Plotnikov joined Seneca College and traveled to other countries with the school's international tourism program. He also began reflecting about human existence, searching for an answer in holy books of the three Abrahamic religions. He took interest in Islam around 2008 and in 2009 he visited an unknown Toronto mosque, where his father said his son came into contact with "a mullah who had very radical views." Soon, Plotnikov adopted and observed strict Muslim customs, isolated himself from his friends and cut off most communication with his family. In September 2010, Plotnikov disappeared, leaving a note that he was going to France for Ramadan. After several months, his parents found out he was living in Moscow with a friend from Toronto. Later, he traveled to the Russian republic of Dagestan and took a residence in the mostly ethnic Kumyk village of Utamysh, Kayakentsky District, His concerned father called the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the police subsequently raided the house where William stayed and briefly detained and interrogated him. Upon his release, William then returned to Moscow, but soon made his way back to Dagestan and joined an armed Islamist rebel group based in the forested mountain range near Utamysh, In an overnight battle, during which the farm was destroyed by artillery fire, According to National Post, he "is believed to be the first Canadian convert to die fighting in the name of jihad." Plotnikov was also the second known Canadian to be killed in the North Caucasus conflict; in 2004, Russian forces said they killed a Canadian citizen named Rudwan Khalil in Chechnya. His father flew to Dagestan and Russian authorities agreed to release his son's body, which he then buried in Utamysh according to local Muslim traditions. ==Alleged links to Tamerlan Tsarnaev==

Plotnikov came under international scrutiny after an investigative article in Russia's liberal opposition investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta, citing their sources in the security forces, wrote that Plotnikov was one of two local contacts (the other one, an ethnic Kumyk-Palestinian teenager named Mahmud Nidal was killed by the police in May 2012) of the Boston Marathon bombings suspect and fellow Russian émigré boxer Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who had allegedly sought to join the insurgency in Dagestan after returning there from the United States in 2012, taking a residence in Makhachkala. According to Novaya, the two had previously communicated via a website associated with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth. After Plotnikov was detained, the security services, using "a wide range of special equipment", allegedly extracted from him a list of people he communicated with; one of the names belonged to Tsarnaev. Tsarnaev had previously visited his aunt in Toronto where Plotnikov lived. With both of his alleged contacts in the insurgency dead, Tsarnaev left Russia just two days after Plotnikov was killed. Vitaly Plotnikov said he was unaware of any contacts between his son and Tsarnaev and denied any connection to the Boston bombings. Dagestan's interior minister Abdurashid Magomedov said through a spokesman that Tsarnaev "did not have contact with the [Islamist] underground during his visit." The Jamestown Foundation regarded Novaya report's mention of Tsarnaev's visit to Toronto as "also a stretch and likely to mislead a casual reader." American investigators in Russia, however, took interest in a possible correlation between the dates of Plotnikov's death and of Tsarnaev's sudden return to the United States. It was also noted in the media that Plotnikov and Tsarnaev's lives were parallel in many respects. It was further reported that both Tsarnaev and Plotnikov were members of the Internet forum Sherdog, as was Ibragim Todashev, a Chechen American MMA fighter from Florida who had been acquainted with Tsarnaev and who was fatally shot by an FBI agent during his questioning on 22 May 2013. ==References==