Christians Under Attack

He’s the ultimate ingrate.

US-hating terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev took government handouts even as he delved deep into the world of violent, radical Islam, officials said.

Tsarnaev, his wife Katherine Russell and their 3-year-old daughter were on the state dole as recently as 2012, officials with the state’s Office of Health and Human Services told the Boston Herald.

The dead Boston Marathon bomber and his family stopped receiving benefits because his hard-working wife, toiling for up 80 hours a week, brought home enough bread to make them ineligible for government assistance.

The home health-care aide supported her deadbeat husband, who stayed at home with the child.

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Tsarnaev’s younger brother, bombing suspect Dzhokar, and their parents also received benefits when they were younger.

Relatives have said Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s journey to violent hate began around 2008 or 2009.

Tamerlan was killed last week, hours after cops released pictures of the suspected brother bombers.

Cops shot Tamerlan but were still going to take him alive when fleeing Dzhokar accidentally ran over his big brother early Friday morning.

Despite their low-income lives, the brothers allegedly collected just enough green to fashion bombs that probably cost less than $100 apiece to construct.

The crude bombs allegedly fashioned by the Tsarnaev brothers were made of affordable kitchen pressure cookers, filled with BBs and other small pieces of metal.

“There is no barrier here to two men doing this on their own,” Brian Michael Jenkins, a Rand Corp. adviser and terrorism expert, told the Boston Globe.

“You could easily do this for under $100 per bomb. . . . This is an investment even someone with modest means can make.”

A lawyer for Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s wife said his client was the hard-working bread winner of the family.

“She has been living in Cambridge, raising her child, and working long hours, caring for people in their homes who are unable to care for themselves,’’ said Amato DeLuca, representing Katherine Russell.

Dzhokhar was clearly on a better path than his big brothers Tamerlan, having won scholarship money for his education at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

He still struggled for pocket money, and resorted to selling marijuana to classmates, several students told the Globe.

And what he wasn’t selling, Dzhokhar was smoking.

“There was a permanent stench of marijuana in his room,” said one observer.

Local mechanic Gilberto Junior recalled Dzhokhar bringing friends to his garage to fix their cars. Junior said Dzhokhar was determined to buy a new car after graduating from college.

Meanwhile, US investigators are in contact with the parents of the two suspects in southern Russia and working with Russian security officials to shed light on the deadly attack, a US Embassy official said Wednesday.

The Americans traveled Tuesday from Moscow to the predominantly Muslim province of Dagestan "because the investigation is ongoing, it's not over," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. He said the US team is working with the Russian security services, the FSB.

"This is a horrible tragedy for our country, but one positive development might be closer cooperation on this set of issues with the Russian government," the embassy official said.

On Wednesday, their mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, was inside the FSB building in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, where she was believed to be speaking further to US and Russian investigators.

Heda Saratova, a prominent Chechen rights activist providing support to the distraught mother, said Tsarnaeva first went in for questioning on Tuesday, returning late at night. Saratova said she had no details about the discussions, but Tsarnaeva said they were "cordial."

The father, Anzor Tsarnaev, also was summoned to the FSB headquarters but did not go because he felt ill.