Boston bomb suspect charged

BOSTON, April 23, 2013 AP





The two brothers suspected of bombing the Boston Marathon appear to have been motivated by a radical brand of Islam but do not seem connected to any Muslim terrorist groups, U.S. officials said Monday after interrogating and charging Dzhokhar Tsarnaev with crimes that could bring the death penalty.



Tsarnaev, 19, was charged in his hospital room, where he was in serious condition with a gunshot wound to the throat and other injuries suffered during his attempted getaway. His older brother, Tamerlan, 26, died Friday after a fierce gun-battle with police.



The Massachusetts university student was charged with using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. He was accused of joining with his brother in setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs that killed three people and wounded more than 200 a week ago.



The brothers, ethnic Chechens from Russia who had been living in the U.S. for about a decade, practiced Islam.



Two U.S. officials said preliminary evidence from the younger man's interrogation suggests the brothers were motivated by religious extremism but were apparently not involved with Islamic terrorist organisations.



Dzhokhar communicated with his interrogators in writing, precluding the type of back-and-forth exchanges often crucial to establishing key facts, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.



They cautioned that they were still trying to verify what they were told by Tsarnaev and were looking at such things as his telephone and online communications and his associations with others.



In the criminal complaint outlining the allegations, investigators said Tsarnaev and his brother each placed a knapsack containing a bomb in the crowd near the finish line of the world's most prestigious marathon.



The FBI said surveillance-camera footage showed Dzhokhar manipulating his mobile phone and lifting it to his ear just instants before the two blasts.



After the first blast, a block away from Dzhokhar, "virtually every head turns to the east ... and stares in that direction in apparent bewilderment and alarm," the complaint says. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, "virtually alone of the individuals in front of the restaurant, appears calm."



The FBI did not say whether he was using his cellphone to detonate one or both of the bombs or whether he was talking to someone.



The criminal complaint shed no light on the motive for the attack.



The Obama administration said it had no choice but to prosecute Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the federal court system. Some politicians had suggested he be tried as an enemy combatant in front of a military tribunal, where defendants are denied some of the usual constitutional protections.



But Tsarnaev is a naturalised U.S. citizen, and under U.S. law, American citizens cannot be tried by military tribunals, White House spokesman Jay Carney said. Carney said that since Sept. 11, 2001, the federal court system has been used to convict and imprison hundreds of terrorists.



Also on Monday, Kazakhstan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement saying two foreign nationals arrested Saturday in the Boston area on immigration violations are from Kazakhstan and may have known the two Marathon bombing suspects.



The foreign ministry said U.S. authorities came across them while searching for "possible links and contacts" to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Their names have not been released.



Shortly after the charges were unveiled, Boston-area residents and many of their well-wishers including President Barack Obama at the White House observed a moment of silence at 2-49 p.m. Eastern (1849 GMT) the moment a week earlier when the bombs exploded.



Tsarnaev could also face state charges in the slaying of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, who was shot in his cruiser Thursday night on the MIT campus in Cambridge.



The FBI said it searched Tsarnaev's dorm room at the University of Massachusetts—Dartmouth on Sunday and found BBs as well as a white hat and dark jacket that look like those worn by one of the suspected bombers in the surveillance photos the agency released a few days after the attack, according to the affidavit.



The document included a chilling detail of the suspects' flight from Cambridge- one of the brothers it wasn't clear which one told a carjacking victim during their getaway attempt, "Did you hear about the Boston explosion? I did that."
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