Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, 46, said she was “proud” of her sons Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, and was travelling to the United States to lay her eldest to rest.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph in the Russian republic of Dagestan, she refused to accept that her sons were responsible for the attack, which killed three people and wounded more than 180, claiming her son had been “set up”.

“It’s a big show, a spectacle. Americans love a show,” she said. …

She said: “Reading extremist materials does not make you a terrorist. Tamerlan told the FBI men, ‘I read many things; I read Pushkin and Dostoyevsky too’. He was an erudite boy.”

Mrs Tsarnaeva, who along with her husband is a US citizen, said: “We are planning to leave for America this week. We want to find a place to bury Tamerlan with Muslim rites in Boston, or somewhere nearby. There must be such a cemetery – there are so many Muslims in the United States after all.”