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Boston Marathon Bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was officially charged by prosecutors on Monday, as he still recovers from gunshot wounds in a Boston hospital. Tsarnaev is the primary suspect in the bombing, which led to a frenzied police pursuit on Thursday night that left another police officer dead and several more injured. The charges have been unsealed, and Tsarnaev is responding to interrogation, revealing new information about his motives and the events that occurred over the last week.
When Tsarnaev was captured Friday evening, he was found suffering from gunshot wounds to his legs, hands, throat and neck, some of which are believed to be self-inflicted. While in intensive care, he has been charged by a magistrate at his bedside with the use of a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property resulting in death. (He is not, as has been speculated, being charged as an enemy combatant.) The Huffington Post reports that Tsarnaev is likely to be charged separately by the state of Massachusetts for the death of Sean Collier, an MIT campus police officer who was killed on Thursday night during the pursuit of the Tsarnaev brothers.
Shortly after Tsarnaev was arraigned, his charges were unsealed, which confirmed a number of facts about what occurred both at the actual bombing and during the police pursuit. Sworn statements from FBI agents involved in the investigation allege that Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, each dropped a backpack containing an explosive device near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Surveillance footage shows Dzhokhar speaking on his telephone shortly before the blast, and then casually walking away from the finish line.
The federal charges do not address the murder of Collier, but describe the events of the police pursuit. According to the complaint, the Tsarnaev brothers hijacked a Mercedes SUV and held the driver hostage. One of the brothers allegedly confessed to the bombing while holding the SUV driver hostage. Improvised explosives were tossed out the window of the stolen car at several places around Watertown.
The FBI said that it searched Tsarnaev’s Dartmouth dorm room and found BBs, which were used in the explosive devices set off at the marathon, along with the white hat and jacket the Tsarnaev was seen wearing in the surveillance footage.
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Though he is too injured to speak, since regaining consciousness over the weekend, Tsarnaev has been able to respond to questions by writing his answers on a sheet of paper while in his hospital bed. During an interrogation, he revealed that he and his brother acted alone in the bombing of the Boston Marathon, without any ties to or assistance from recognized or unrecognized terrorist groups. Officials have revealed that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a reader of jihadist and extremist propaganda. Authorities also learned that the brothers found plans for building bombs on the internet.
