Investigators were seeking a motive for the Boston Marathon bombings and whether others were involved as they awaited a chance yesterday to interview the surviving ethnic Chechen suspect.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was in a Boston hospital seriously wounded and unable to speak, after he was captured late on Friday at the end of a huge manhunt.
His brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a firefight with police earlier on Friday.
Investigators are trying to determine if others had a role in detonating bombs made in pressure cookers and packed with ball bearings and nails that exploded at the Boston Marathon on Monday last week, killing three people and injuring 176.
Tamerlan traveled to Moscow in January last year and spent six months in the region, a law enforcement source said. However, it was unclear what he did while he was there and if he could have had contact with militant Islamist groups in Russia’s Caucasus region.
Authorities have yet to charge Dzhokhar, who will be defended by the US Federal Public Defender Office that represents criminal suspects who cannot afford a lawyer.
Sources had said he would face charges on Saturday, but late in the evening officials from the US Attorneys’ Office and the US Department of Justice indicated no statement would be made before yesterday.
The role of the FBI is also being questioned after the agency said it had interviewed Tamerlan in 2011 after Russian security services raised concerns he followed radical Islam. The FBI said it did not find any “terrorism activity” at that time.
However, the brothers’ mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told a Russian TV station that Tamerlan had been under FBI surveillance for years.
The New York Times, citing unnamed federal officials, reported authorities had held up Tamerlan’s application for US citizenship because of the FBI’s 2011 interview.
Records show Tamerlan was arrested when police were called to a report of domestic violence in 2009.
Dzhokhar, a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, was shot in the throat and could not speak, a source said.
“We have a million questions and those questions need to be answered,” Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said on Saturday.
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
STANDING TOGETHER: Amid China’s increasingly aggressive activities, nations must join forces in detecting and dealing with incursions, a Taiwanese official said Two senior Philippine officials and one former official yesterday attended the Taiwan International Ocean Forum in Taipei, the first high-level visit since the Philippines in April lifted a ban on such travel to Taiwan. The Ocean Affairs Council hosted the two-day event at the National Taiwan University Hospital International Convention Center. Philippine Navy spokesman Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, Coast Guard spokesman Grand Commodore Jay Tarriela and former Philippine Presidential Communications Office assistant secretary Michel del Rosario participated in the forum. More than 100 officials, experts and entrepreneurs from 15 nations participated in the forum, which included discussions on countering China’s hybrid warfare
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