Friday, 26 April 2013

Boston bombing suspect moved to prison from hospital: officials


Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, suspect #2 in the Boston Marathon explosion is pictured in this undated FBI handout photo. REUTERS/FBI/Handout
 Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, suspect..

BOSTON (Reuters) - Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been moved to a prison at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, from the hospital where he had been held since his arrest a week ago, the U.S. Marshals Service said on Friday.
The 19-year-old ethnic Chechen, who was badly wounded in an overnight shootout last week with police hours after authorities released pictures of him and his older brother, also a suspect, had previously been held at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where some of the victims were also being treated.
Tsarnaev's older brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan, died in the shootout.
Tsarnaev was charged on Monday with the April 15 bombing, which killed three and wounded 264 at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. If convicted, he faces the possibility of the death penalty.
"The U.S. Marshals Service confirms that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been transported from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and is now confined at the Bureau of Prisons facility FMC Devens at Ft. Devens, Mass.," said U.S. Marshals Service spokesman Drew Wade.
Devens, Massachusetts, is about 39 miles west of Boston. The prison there specializes in inmates who need long-term medical or mental health there, according to the Bureau of Prisons website. It currently holds about 1,000 prisoners.
NIGHT OF TERROR
Authorities say the brothers set off a pair of homemade bombs at the marathon on April 15. Three days later, the FBI and police identified the men in photos and videos taken at the scene.
The brothers are also suspected of shooting Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, 26, on April 18 and then hijacking a man in a car, which they planned to drive to New York City and set off additional explosives in Times Square.
Their plan was foiled when the car, a Mercedes sport-utility vehicle, ran low on fuel and they stopped for gas, giving the man a chance to escape.
Their carjacking victim was a 26-year-old man of Chinese origin who goes by the American nickname "Danny," the Boston Globe reported on Friday. The newspaper did not publish his Chinese name at his request.
"I don't want to die," the man recalled thinking as the brothers drove him around for some 90 minutes, making banal small talk, according to an interview with the Globe. "I have a lot of dreams that haven't come true yet."
Danny, who is trained as an engineer, kept the brothers calm by playing up his outsider status, although at first they were puzzled by his Chinese accent, the Globe said. After determining that the victim was Chinese, Tamerlan Tsarnaev identified himself as a Muslim, the newspaper reported.
"Chinese are very friendly to Muslims!" Danny said, according to the interview. "We are so friendly to Muslims."
One of the three people who died in the bombing was also Chinese, 23-year-old graduate student Lingzi Lu. An 8-year-old boy, Martin Richard, and 29-year-old restaurant manager Krystle Campbell were also killed in the attack.
The brothers' parents, father Anzor Tsarnaev and mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, told reporters on Thursday in Makhachkala, the capital of Russia's Dagestan region, that they believed their son was innocent.
The father said he planned to travel to Boston to bury Tamerlan.
This week, lawmakers demanded answers about what the U.S. government knew about the suspects before the bombing. In 2011, Russia had asked the FBI to question Tamerlan because of concerns that he may have been a radical Islamist.

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