A cover of the anti-Semitic forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," which Boston Marathon explosions suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was reportedly interested in. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The former brother-in-law of Boston Marathon explosions suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev said in an interview that the bomber was interested in reading the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

“He never said he hated America or he hated the Jews,” Elmirza Khozhugov, Tamerlan’s ex-brother-in-law, told the Associated Press. “But he was fairly aggressive toward the policies of the U.S. toward countries with Muslim populations. He disliked the wars.”

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an anti-Semitic hoax, first published in Russia in 1903, that describes Jewish plans for global domination. The book has become a favorite of anti-Semites and purportedly influenced Adolf Hitler’s views on the Jewish people.

Meanwhile, federal investigators are attempting to piece together how Tamerlan and his brother Dzhokhar became exposed to radical Islam.

According to interviews with family members, Tamerlan was possibly first exposed to radical Islam by an Armenian convert to Islam man named Misha, who may have attended the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, Mass., with Tamerlan.

“I heard about nobody else but this convert,” Tamerlan’s uncle, Ruslan Tsnari, told the Associated Press. “The seed for changing his views was planted right there in Cambridge.”

The head of the Boston-based advocacy and watchdog group Americans for Peace and Tolerance, Dr. Charles Jacobs, who has investigated Boston mosques for possible ties to radical Islamic preachers and groups for more than a decade, says the Islamic Society of Boston may have played a role in the radicalization of the Boston Marathon explosions suspects.

“We don’t know where these boys were radicalized, but this mosque has a curriculum that radicalizes people. Other people have been radicalized there,” Jacobs told USA Today.