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Tsarnaevs Might’ve Had Help In Boston Marathon Attack, Prosecutors Say

Tsarnaevs Might’ve Had Help In Boston Marathon Attack, Prosecutors Say

By Richard A. Serrano, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that the Tsarnaev brothers may have received help in building the two bombs that exploded at last year’s Boston Marathon, although they did not identify any potential suspects except to suggest the pair were inspired by al-Qaida operatives overseas.

In court papers, prosecutors said Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev had emptied hundreds of packages of fireworks to create fuel for the bombs. Yet no powder residue was found in their apartments or three vehicles, “strongly suggesting that others had built, or at least helped the Tsarnaevs build, the bombs, and thus might have built more” explosive devices, the documents say.

Prosecutors did not say whether they still believed that theory or were convinced now that the two immigrant brothers from the Russian republic of Dagestan had acted alone when they allegedly detonated two homemade bombs that killed three people and injured more than 260 near the finish line of the race on April 15, 2013.

Prosecutors also revealed several new details about the bombs. They said the fuses were fashioned from Christmas lights and the improvised remote-control detonators were built from model car parts.

“These relatively sophisticated devices would have been difficult for the Tsarnaevs to fabricate successfully without training or assistance from others,” prosecutors wrote.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died after a shootout with police four days after the bombing. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, now 20, was wounded and captured in a boat stored in a nearby yard in Watertown, a Boston suburb.

In notes found in the boat, scrawled in pencil, he defended the bombings as retaliation for Americans killing “innocent civilians” abroad, authorities say. He also wrote that he was “jealous” of his slain brother.

“I do not mourn because his soul is very much alive,” he wrote. “God has a plan for each person. Mine was to hide in this boat and shed some light on our actions.”

Prosecutors said the writing “bears hallmarks of al-Qaida-inspired rhetoric, suggested that Tsarnaev might have received instruction from a terrorist group.” They said his repeated use of the word “we” suggested that “others might be poised to commit similar attacks and that Tsarnaev was urging them on.”

Tsarnaev faces 30 charges and could face the death penalty if convicted in connection with the bombings. Prosecutors filed the papers to oppose a motion by Tsarnaev’s lawyers to keep his statements to the FBI, made while he was hospitalized after his capture, from being used in court.

The defense contends that he gave the statements under duress, when he was sedated.

But prosecutors said the FBI questioned Tsarnaev under a public safety provision in the law that allows authorities to hastily gather information if they believe lives are in jeopardy.

“The government did nothing wrong,” prosecutors said.

At the hospital, they said, Tsarnaev “readily admitted” that he and his brother had carried out the bombings. They said he was “responsive, coherent and clear-headed.”

Timothy A. Clary AFP

Judge: Three Friends Of Boston Bombing Suspect To Be Tried Separately

Judge: Three Friends Of Boston Bombing Suspect To Be Tried Separately

By Michael Muskal, Los Angeles Times

Three friends of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will be tried separately, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday, while rejecting a defense bid to move the proceedings out of Massachusetts.

U.S. District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock in Boston ruled on a variety of motions filed on behalf of Azamat Tazhayakov, Dias Kadyrbayev and Robel Phillipos.

Tazhayakov, Kadyrbayev and Phillipos will be tried on June 30, Sept. 8, and Sept. 29, respectively, Christina Sterling, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz in Boston, told the Los Angeles Times.

Woodlock rejected arguments by the defense that none of the trio could receive a fair trial in Massachusetts because of the heightened emotions caused by last year’s Boston Marathon bombings. Three people were killed and more than 260 injured in the two blasts near the race’s finish line. An MIT police officer was killed in the manhunt for suspects that followed the attack.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is being held in near-total lockdown, faces federal charges that could lead to the death penalty if he is convicted for his alleged role in the attack. His brother, Tamerlan, died during the manhunt.

Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev have pleaded not guilty to charges that they obstructed justice by allegedly removing a backpack containing fireworks and a laptop computer from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s dorm room at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. They are both Kazakhstan nationals and are being held without bail.

Phillipos is charged with lying to investigators about the alleged removal of the items. He has also pleaded not guilty, but is free on bail.

In court papers, Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev, who were in the United States on student visas, contended they were unfamiliar with American law and had weak English skills. Phillipos has said he was incapacitated because had been smoking marijuana all day at the time of interviews.

All face as much as 20 years in prison if convicted of the top charge. Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev also could be deported if they are convicted.

AFP photo

Report Faults FBI Work Before Boston Marathon Attack

Report Faults FBI Work Before Boston Marathon Attack

By Richard A. Serrano, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — An inspectors general report released Thursday faulted the FBI for failing to conduct a “more thorough assessment” of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, saying such an investigation might have turned up evidence about his growing embrace of Islamic militancy and his possible threat to the United States.

But the report’s unclassified summary stopped short of saying a closer examination of Tsarnaev would necessarily have prevented the April 15, 2013, attack, which killed three people and injured more than 260.

Acting on a 2011 tip from Russian intelligence, the FBI investigated Tsarnaev before last year’s bombing, but closed the inquiry after the bureau found no links to terrorism.

Tsarnaev was killed four days after the attack in a shootout with police in nearby Watertown, Mass. His younger brother and suspected accomplice, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was arrested and faces a potential death sentence when he goes on trial this year.

The joint report by the inspectors general from the departments of Justice and Homeland Security and various intelligence agencies said that after Tsarnaev returned to the U.S. from a trip to Russia’s North Caucasus region in 2012, the FBI was unaware that he had visited a training ground for extremists.

Had the FBI known about his activities there or about his Internet postings embracing Islamist militancy, the report said, “the FBI would have opened a second assessment and interviewed Tsarnaev about why he went to Russia.”

The report also criticized the FBI for not sharing its intelligence on Tsarnaev with law enforcement officials in Boston, saying that local police might have opened their own investigation.

After the bombing, the FBI was sharply criticized for not doing more to investigate Tsarnaev. The inspectors general report said that in March 2011 the FBI’s legal attache in Moscow received a memo from the Russian security agency FSB regarding Tsarnaev and his mother. It alleged that both were “adherents of radical Islam” and that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was preparing to travel to Russia to join “unspecified bandit underground groups” in the restive republics of Dagestan and Chechnya.

The Russian agency also advised that Tsarnaev was considering changing his name to “Tsarni.” The memo included incorrect birth dates for Tsarnaev and misspelled his last name.

The attache forwarded the memo to the Boston FBI field office, where an agent assigned to the local Joint Terrorism Task Force began investigating. She conducted database searches, reviewed references to Tsarnaev and his family, performed drive-bys of Tsarnaev’s home, visited his former college and interviewed Tsarnaev and his parents.

But the inspectors general report faulted the FBI for not doing more, saying that “additional investigative steps would have resulted in a more thorough assessment,” perhaps revealing Tsarnaev’s upcoming trip to the Russian Caucasus.

The report said that the FBI should have alerted local police, tapped into more databases, visited the mosque where Tsarnaev often erupted in tirades about extremism, interviewed Tsarnaev’s wife and talked to his former girlfriend, whom he was accused of assaulting in 2009, resulting in arrest. They also should have interviewed Tsarnaev’s friends and associates, the report said.

Furthermore, the report said, the FBI agent who interviewed Tsarnaev and his parents did not attempt to elicit information about his travel plans, his lifestyle changes and “his sympathy for militant separatists in Chechnya and Dagestan.”

FBI Director James B. Comey, who took the helm after the Boston Marathon bombings, said in response to the report’s findings that the bureau had taken broad steps to ensure that in the future “all threat information is proactively and uniformly shared with state and local partners.”

He strongly defended the work of the FBI in the worst terrorism attack in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001.

“I am proud of the work that the Boston field office did in this case, before the bombings as well as after them,” Comey said.

Christopher S. Penn via Flickr