Ahead of the Boston marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s first public court appearance in July, BBC’s Newshour will have special live coverage from Boston and southern Russia on  Monday, June 24^th at 0800 EDT and 0900 EDT. This will be followed with substantial coverage later in the day on Monday at 1500 EDT and 1600 EDT as well as coverage in all editions of Newshour on Tuesday, June 25^th.

James Menendez will be at the studios of WBUR in Boston while fellow Newshour presenter Tim Franks will be over five thousand miles away in the troubled republic of Dagestan. On the edge of the Caucasus, Dagestan is on the front line of Russia’s war against local Islamic militants, a place of regular shootings, explosions and assassinations. But was it also the breeding ground for the extremism which drove the Boston bombing suspects? The Tsarnaev family lived in Dagestan in 2001-2002, and it’s the current home of the alleged bombers’ parents.

Newshour has a rare interview with the mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva. She still maintains her two sons are innocent. And,  having previously blamed America for taking her sons away from her, she tells Newshour she now wishes to apologize to the people of America for some of those outspoken remarks. Tim Franks also speaks to many of those caught up in Russia’s “war on terror”: Islamist radicals, moderate clerics, local officials, victims of violence, and families made homeless because one of their sons have joined the armed guerrillas.  In Boston, James Menendez will hear how the city is recovering from the trauma of the marathon bombing. And he’ll report from the first official Boston Athletics Association race since the marathon.