Boston Marathon suspect's injuries hinder FBI investigation

Surviving suspect's injuries prevent him from communicating effectively as FBI faces scrutiny over contact with Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011

Karen McVeigh and Matt Williams in New York, Adam Gabbatt in Boston and Miriam Elder in Makhachkala, Dagestan

The Guardian, Monday 22 April 2013

The surviving Boston bombings suspect is so seriously injured that investigators may struggle to interrogate him effectively, it was suggested on Sunday, as further questions were raised about the FBI's previous contacts with his dead brother.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old who is accused of planting the pressure-cooker bombs with his older brother Tamerlan that killed three and injured more than 180 at the Boston Marathon last Monday, was being treated in hospital for a reported bullet wound to the throat and was unable to speak. He was captured on Friday night, a day after a violent gun battle with police that left his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, dead.

Dan Coats, a Republican member of the Senate intelligence committee, told ABC: "The information that we have is that there was a shot to the throat. It doesn't mean he can't communicate, but right now I think he's in a condition where we can't get any information from him at all."

The Boston mayor, Tom Menino, told This Week on ABC that he was so seriously ill that agents might never be able to interrogate him. But there were reports later on Sunday that he was answering questions in writing.

The Boston police commissioner, Ed Davis, said the brothers had probably planned more attacks, based on the many more unexploded homemade bombs found at the scene of their gun battle on Friday with police. The stockpile was "as dangerous as it gets in urban policing", Davis said.

"We have reason to believe, based upon the evidence that was found at that scene – the explosions, the explosive ordnance that was unexploded and the firepower that they had – that they were going to attack other individuals," he told CBS. More explosives may yet be found but te people of Boston were safe, Davis said.

More details emerged at the weekend of the suspects' race to evade capture. As the authorities closed in on Thursday night in the Watertown area, the Tsarnaev brothers are accused of killing an officer with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology police, severely wounding a Boston transit officer and engaging in a frenzied car chase and shootout during which they bombarded officers with explosives, including a pressure-cooker bomb.

The chief of Watertown police, Edward Deveau, said officers attempted to tackle Tamerlan Tsanaev when he ran out of ammunition, but had to take cover as his younger brother drove a carjacked Mercedes at them. The SUV dragged Tamerlan's body down the block, he said. The suspect was taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Meanwhile Dzhokhar Tsarnaev escapted on foot. He was eventually captured late on Friday night after a resident discovered a bloody trail leading to a boat in his backyard. He was taken to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where security was tight on Sunday.

As authorities guarded Tsarnaev, attention turned a trip to Russia in 2012 by his older brother. His family has claimed Tamerlan Tsarnaev went to Dagestan to visit his father, but an aunt, Patimat Suleimanova, told the Guardian on Sunday that he arrived in the area before his father. She said Tamerlan Tsarnaev left the United States in January 2012 and arrived in Dagestan around March. His father, Anzor Tsarnaev, only arrived in the republic in May. "He came to become acquainted with [Dagestan]," Suleimanova said. "He would sit at home and pray. He was learning to read the Qur'an. He saw relatives, friends."

She hinted that times had become tough for the brothers after their father left the United States for Dagestan, followed a couple of months later by their mother, Zuneidat. Anzor Tsarnaev had bought a ticket for the United States for 16 April, she said, because the brothers were having money problems. "He would send money from here when he could," she said.

US officials are investigating whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev built links with Dagestani rebels, fighting a heavy police state in order to build an Islamist caliphate along Russia's southern flank. Dagestan's main rebel group denied any links with the attack in a statement released on Sunday

'His views aren't mainstream'

The FBI was criticised on Sunday for failing to follow up on Tsarnaev after its contacts in 2011. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, told CNN's State of the Nation: "The ball was dropped in one of two ways. The FBI missed a lot of things."

Republican Peter King, chairman of the House subcommittee on counterterrorism, was also critical. "This is the firth case I'm aware of where the FBI has failed to stop someone," he told Fox News Sunday, citing the cases of al-Qaida recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki, Little Rock shooter Carlos Bledsoe, the accused Fort Hood killer Nidal Malik and alleged American-Pakistani terrorist David Coleman Headley.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that a hold was placed on a citizenship request by the 26-year-old as a result of the FBI's former interest in him. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security decided not to grant his application after a routine background check uncovered the 2011 interview by agents, the report said.

The Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been asked to leave a mosque in Cambridge, Massachusetts, three months ago, after he interrupted a prayer service to argue with the imam, who had referred to Martin Luther King Jr. A member of the mosque present at the service told the LA Times that Tsarnaev shouted: "You cannot mention this guy because he's not a Muslim!"

Imam Suhaib Webb, of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, the city's largest mosque, said in an interview that he had recently heard of the incident. "That's a sign right there that his views aren't mainstream," Webb said.

Bostonians gathered to remember the victims on Sunday. A few blocks from where the bombs exploded less than a week ago, hundreds packed into the Church of the Covenant in Boston. The church had thrown open its doors to worshippers from the city's Old South Church, located in the police area still closed off to the public, and most of the pews were full as the service began.

The scale of the bombings was immediately apparent as around half the congregation responded to a request from Rev Dr Jim Antal, president of the Massachusetts United Church of Christ, to raise their hands they were near the explosions or knew someone who was. "Now raise your hand if you have visited or spoken with someone who was injured," Antal said. Dozens of people had.

A few miles north-west of Boston, in Medford, the family and friends of Krystle Campbell, 29, one of three spectators killed by the attacks on the Boston Marathon, held a wake for her on Sunday. The two others killed were Martin Richard, eight, of the Dorchester neighbourhood of Boston, and Lu Lingzi, 23, a Boston University graduate student from China. The university is holding a memorial service for Lingzi on Monday.

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