Saturday, April 27, 2013

Boston suspect is moved; FBI searches landfill

FILE - This April 25, 2013 file photo shows the mother of the two Boston bombing suspects, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, left, speaking at a news conference in Makhachkala, the southern Russian province of Dagestan. Two government officials tell The Associated Press that U.S. intelligence agencies added the Boston bombing suspects' mother to a federal terrorism database about 18 months before the attack. At right is her sister-in-law Maryam. (AP Photo/Musa Sadulayev, File)

FILE - This April 25, 2013 file photo shows the mother of the two Boston bombing suspects, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, left, speaking at a news conference in Makhachkala, the southern Russian province of Dagestan. Two government officials tell The Associated Press that U.S. intelligence agencies added the Boston bombing suspects' mother to a federal terrorism database about 18 months before the attack. At right is her sister-in-law Maryam. (AP Photo/Musa Sadulayev, File)

FILE - In this Dec. 5, 2011 file photo, two guards are stationed outside the Devens Federal Medical Center (FMC) in Devens, Mass. The U.S. Marshals Service said Friday, April 26, 2013, that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, charged in the Boston Marathon bombing April 15, 2013, had been moved from a Boston hospital to the federal medical center at Devens, about 40 miles west of the city. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)

FILE - This combination of undated file photos shows Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, left, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19. The FBI says the two brothers are the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, and are also responsible for killing an MIT police officer, critically injuring a transit officer in a firefight and throwing explosive devices at police during a getaway attempt in a long night of violence that left Tamerlan dead and Dzhokhar captured, late Friday, April 19, 2013. The ethnic Chechen brothers lived in Dagestan, which borders the Chechnya region in southern Russia. They lived near Boston and had been in the U.S. for about a decade, one of their uncles reported said. Since Monday, Boston has experienced five days of fear, beginning with the marathon bombing attack, an intense manhunt and much uncertainty ending in the death of one suspect and the capture of the other. (AP Photo/The Lowell Sun & Robin Young, File)

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, left, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg hold a news conference, Thursday, April, 25, 2013 in New York. The two say the Boston Marathon bombing suspects intended to blow up their remaining explosives in Times Square. They said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told Boston investigators from his hospital bed that he and his brother had discussed going to New York to detonate their remaining explosives. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

This Friday, April 26, 2013 photo shows the entrance of the Devens Federal Medical Center (FMC) in Devens, Mass. The U.S. Marshals Service said Friday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, charged in the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, had been moved from a Boston hospital to the federal medical center at Devens, about 40 miles west of the city. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

BOSTON (AP) ? Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhohkar Tsarnaev was moved from a hospital to a federal prison medical center, while FBI agents searched for evidence Friday in a landfill near the college he was attending.

Tsarnaev, 19, was taken from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he was recovering from a gunshot wound to the throat and other injuries suffered during a getaway attempt, and transferred to the Federal Medical Center Devens, about 40 miles from Boston, the U.S. Marshals Service said. The facility at a former Army base treats federal prisoners.

Also, FBI agents picked through a landfill near the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where Tsarnaev was a sophomore. FBI spokesman Jim Martin would not say what investigators were looking for.

An aerial photo in Friday's Boston Globe showed a line of more than 20 investigators, all dressed in white overalls and yellow boots, picking over the garbage with shovels or rakes.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, said that the bombing suspects' mother had been added to a federal terrorism database about 18 months before the deadly attack ? a disclosure that deepens the mystery around the Tsarnaev family and marks the first time American authorities have acknowledged that Zubeidat Tsarnaeva was under investigation before the tragedy.

The news is certain to fuel questions about whether the Obama administration missed opportunities to thwart the April 15 bombing that killed three people and wounded more than 260.

Tsarnaev is charged with joining with his older brother, now dead, in setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs. The brothers are ethnic Chechens from Russia who came to the United States about a decade ago with their parents. Investigators have said it appears that the brothers were angry about the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Two government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation, said the CIA had Zubeidat Tsarnaeva's name added to the terror database along with that of her son Tamerlan Tsarnaev after Russia contacted the agency in 2011 with concerns that the two were religious militants.

About six months earlier, the FBI investigated mother and son, also at Russia's request, one of the officials said. The FBI found no ties to terrorism. Previously U.S. officials had said only that the FBI investigated Tamerlan.

In an interview from Russia, Tsarnaeva said Friday that she has never been linked to terrorism.

"It's all lies and hypocrisy," she told The Associated Press from Dagestan. "I'm sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular person, and I've never been mixed up in any criminal intentions, especially any linked to terrorism."

Tsarnaeva faces shoplifting charges in the U.S. over the alleged theft of more than $1,624 worth of women's clothing from a Lord & Taylor department store in Natick, Mass., in 2012.

Earlier this week, she said she has been assured by lawyers that she would not be arrested if she traveled to the U.S., but she said she was still deciding whether to go. The suspects' father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said that he would leave Russia soon for the United States to visit one son and lay the other to rest.

A team of investigators from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow has questioned both parents in Russia this week, spending many hours with the mother in particular over two days.

Meanwhile, New York's police commissioner said the FBI was too slow to inform the city that the Boston Marathon suspects had been planning to bomb Times Square days after the attack at the race.

Federal investigators learned about the short-lived scheme from a hospitalized Dzhokhar Tsarnaev during a bedside interrogation that began Sunday night and extended into Monday morning, officials said. The information didn't reach the New York Police Department until Wednesday night.

"We did express our concerns over the lag," Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the findings on Thursday.

The FBI had no comment Friday.

___

Eileen Sullivan reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Colleen Long in New York and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this story.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-04-26-Boston%20Marathon-Explosions/id-5c91c6d0909f4d8683ce19f55c0f90e5

fidel castro rick santorum ozzie guillen castro comments phish gluten free diet barry zito mac virus

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.