Bombing Suspect Is in 'No Condition to be Interrogated'

Bombing Suspect Is Responding to Questions in Writing (ABC News)

Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is in no condition to be interrogated and until that happens, officials won't know definitively about other threats, authorities said.

"I wouldn't talk about his specific injuries, but he's not in a condition to be interrogated this point and time," said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis in a news conference Sunday.

Tsarnaev, 19, is being treated at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where he is listed in serious but stable condition, with wounds to the neck and throat area, according to sources.

Investigators said he is unable to communicate because of his injuries that might include wounds from an earlier gunfight.

The bombing killed three, including a young boy, and wounded about 170. An MIT officer was allegedly killed by Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan and a Boston transit cop was badly wounded in a subsequent shootout.

The FBI is still collecting evidence from the Monday's blast site, mainly from the sides of buildings and the bleachers. Davis said that the circuit board to at least one of the bombs had wires crudely soldered to it and is confident ATF agents will put that bomb back together piece by piece and tell us what it was made of.

Engineers are also checking the structural integrity of buildings near the scene before it fully reopens. Boston Police plan to start returning personal items to people who left behind their things on Monday.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said it is time for the city to move forward.

"I'm working hard over the last several days develop a plan to reopen Boyleston Street now the most famous street in the world," Menino said at the Sunday news conference.

Possible Charges at State and Federal Levels

Tsarnaev could face charges at the state and federal levels, but Massachusetts has no death penalty.

Menino hopes federal authorities "throw the book at him," which would include the possibility of execution.

"I hope that the U.S. attorney takes him on the federal side and throws the book at him," Menino said on "This Week." "These two individuals held this city hostage for five whole days."

"They should not do that -- that's what these terrorist events want to do, hold the city hostage and stop the economy of the city."

RELATED: 'This Week' Transcript: Mayor Thomas Menino

Menino said he agreed with the decision to shut down the city Friday because of multiple events, including the discovery of a pipe bomb unrelated to the marathon attack.

"At that time we found a pipe bomb at another location in our city of Boston," he said. "Another individual was taken into custody."

Menino did not elaborate on the pipe bomb incident.

He said he believed the Tsarnaev brothers acted alone when they allegedly set off two bombs at the Boston Marathon finish line.

He also said he thought that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who died after a gun battle with police, "brainwashed or manipulated" his 19-year-old brother, who was taken into custody Friday.

It's unclear when Dzokhar Tsarnaev will be able to talk, but a special interrogation team is at the ready, sources said.

He apparently knows that his brother died after a Thursday night gun battle with police, sources say.

Authorities had launched Friday a manhunt for Tsarnaev, who managed to escape one block outside a police perimeter. Residents of greater Boston were told to stay in doors, as police hoped to find and apprehend Tsarnaev alive.

Authorities zeroed in on a boat in a Watertown, Mass., backyard after they received a tip from homeowner George Henneberry, who saw something was amiss.

PHOTOS: Boston Bombing Suspect Manhunt

An infrared camera with a bird's-eye view of the moments before Tsarnaev's capture gave authorities an idea of what to expect as they methodically closed in on the Boston Marathon bombings suspect.

Police believe Tsarnaev was initially wounded Thursday night in the gun battle that ended in hisbrother's death. Police said they found blood in a car he abandoned and blood at a house.

RELATED: Boston Bomb Suspect Captured Alive in Backyard Boat

The thermal-imaging camera showed Tsarnaev was able to move around inside the boat, as the FBI SWAT team brought in a robotic device to approach the boat and peel back a tarp, giving authorities a clear view of the suspect.

At least two flash grenades were thrown into the boat, designed to disorient Tsarnaev, who authorities feared might have been wearing a suicide vest.

They were then able to move in, rushing Tsarnaev to Beth Israel medical center for treatment, where he has remained under heavy guard. He was not wearing a vest.

It was unclear whether he was hit by a final exchange of gunfire Friday.

Tsarnaev is in the same hospital where his brother, Tamerlan, 26, was brought early Friday after a shootout with police. Tamerlan died of his wounds.

The Investigation

Investigators, who are expected to include the country's elite counterterrorism unit, are hoping that Tsarnaev survives because they are intent on determining what triggered his and his brother's alleged involvement in the attack and whether they had any help.

One focus of the probe so far is a six-month trip Tamerlan Tsarnaev took to the semi autonomous Russian province of Dagestan in 2012. Dagestan has become a hotbed of militant Islamic activity.

The FBI acknowledged it interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev at the request of Russian authorities, but after looking at his phone records, websites he visited and associates, the FBI found he had no ties to terror.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the suspects' mother, said her sons couldn't be responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings because Tamerlan had been on the FBI's radar.

"My son would never do this. It is a set up," she said. "He was controlled by FBI like for five, three, five years. They knew what my son was doing."

RELATED: Bombing Suspects' Mom: 'My Family Is in the Dirt'

After Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been checked out, FBI officials said the monitoring had to stop by law because they found nothing incriminating.

"There are too many people in this country just like him that are touching extremist websites that are espousing things that aren't particularly kind to Americans. But that's not against the law here," ABC News consultant and former FBI special agent Brad Garrett said.

Boston Starts to Heal

After a week of tragedy, terror and living on edge, the greater Boston area is finally breathing a sigh of relief.

"We got our guy and very proud of it and we want Watertown to back to normal; we want Boston to go back to normal," Watertown Chief of Police Edward Deveau told ABC News.

On Sunday, Cardinal Sean O'Malley called on the people of Boston to return to the community.

"It has been refreshing to see the generous and at times heroic response to the Patriot's Day violence. Out challenge is to keep the spirit of community alive," he said.

Pictures of those killed were place on easels inside this cathedral and O'Malley said they live now in eternity.

At a Red Sox game on Saturday, fans filled Fenway Park with their voices, singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in unison.

They applauded for law enforcement, they mourned the victims of the bombings and they showed their resilient spirit.

"We are one. We are strong. We are Boston. We are Boston strong," the announcer said to an eruption of cheers.

The Red Sox later pulled out a spirit-boosting win.

And America hasn't forgotten about David Henneberry, the man who tipped police off that Tsarnaev was hiding in his boat.

Bullets riddled the blood-stained vessel during a final volley of gunfire between Tsarnaev and law enforcement. Henneberry is being regarded as a hero, and people around the country are sending him checks to put toward a new boat.

Deborah Newberry, 62, of Orlando, Fla., told ABCNews.com she mailed a $25 check to Henneberry's home.

"Just listening to his coolness and how he handled the situation, it was like OK, that is a man who needs to have his boat restored," she said.

ABC News' Pierre Thomas, Anthony Castellano, Aaron Katersky and Christina Ng contributed to this report.

Also Read

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A Turkish civilian helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing in a Taliban-controlled area of eastern Afghanistan, and the insurgents took all nine people aboard the aircraft hostage, including eight Turks, officials said Monday.

The transport helicopter landed in strong winds and heavy rain on Sunday in a village in the Azra district of Logar province, southeast of Kabul and 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Pakistan border, said district governor Hamidullah Hamid.

Taliban fighters then captured all nine aboard the helicopter and took them from the area, Hamid told The Associated Press. He said most of the nine civilian hostages are Turks but that one is an Afghan translator.

In Ankara, a spokesman at Turkey's Foreign Ministry told the AP that there were eight Turks aboard the helicopter but did not know if it also was carrying other civilians or what their nationalities were. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with ministry regulations, had no information about the condition of the civilians.

Turkey's semi-official Anadolu news agency quoted Logar Deputy Police Chief Resishan Sadik Abdurrahminzey as saying that "a large number" of policemen were being sent to the region to rescue the hostages.

NATO said the helicopter went down on Sunday, but the International Security Assistance Force did not have any other details. ISAF spokeswoman Erin Stattel said the coalition was assisting in the recovery of the aircraft. She could not say whether the helicopter made a precautionary landing or the Taliban had forced it down.

Logar Deputy Police Chief Rais Khan Abdul Rahimzai said he didn't know what kind of cargo the helicopter was carrying, where it was headed, or whether it was working for NATO.

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Associated Press writers Amir Shah in Kabul and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.

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Follow Thomas Wagner on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/tjpwagner.

A woman looks at her child as they rest among the wreckage after Saturday's earthquake in Lingguan town of Baoxing county, Sichuan province, April 21, 2013. Rescuers struggled to reach a remote, rural corner of southwestern China on Sunday as the death toll climbs to 186 people dead and 11,393 injured, Xinhua News Agency reported. Picture taken April 21, 2013. REUTERS/China Daily

People walk next to a crack on the road after Saturday's earthquake in Baoxing county, Sichuan province, April 21, 2013. Rescuers struggled to reach a remote, rural corner of southwestern China on Sunday as the death toll climbs to 186 people dead and 11,393 injured, Xinhua News Agency reported. Picture taken April 21, 2013. REUTERS/China Daily

By Michael Martina and Maxim Duncan

LUSHAN, China (Reuters) - Rescuers struggled to reach a remote, rural corner of southwestern China on Sunday as the toll of the dead and missing from the country's worst earthquake in three years climbed to 208 with almost 1,000 serious injuries.

The 6.6 magnitude quake struck in Lushan county, near the city of Ya'an in the southwestern province of Sichuan, close to where a devastating 7.9 quake hit in May 2008, killing 70,000.

Most of the deaths were concentrated in Lushan, a short drive up the valley from Ya'an, but rescuers' progress was hampered by the narrowness of the road and landslides, as well as government controls restricting access to avoid traffic jams.

"The Lushan county center is getting back to normal, but the need is still considerable in terms of shelter and materials," said Kevin Xia of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

"Supplies have had difficulty getting into the region because of the traffic jams. Most of our supplies are still on the way."

In Ya'an, relief workers from across China expressed frustration with gaining access to Lushan and the villages beyond, up in the mountains.

"We're in a hurry. There are people that need help and we have supplies in the back (of the car)," said one man from the Shandong Province Earthquake Emergency Response Team, who declined to give his name.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs put the number of dead at 184 and missing at 24, with more than 11,800 injured.

Hundreds of armed police were blocked from using roads that were wrecked by landslides and marched in single file with shovels en route to Baoxing, one of the hardest hit areas. Xinhua news agency said 18,000 troops were in the area.

The Foreign Ministry thanked foreign governments for offers of help, but said the country was able to cope.

In Lushan, doctors and nurses tended to people in the open or under tents in the grounds of the main hospital, surrounded by shattered glass, plaster and concrete. Water and electricity were cut off by the quake, but the spring weather is warm.

"I was scared. I've never seen an earthquake this big before," said farmer Chen Tianxiong, 37, lying on a stretcher between tents, his family looking on.

In another tent, Zhou Lin sat tending to his wife and three-day-old son who were evacuated from a Lushan hospital soon after the quake struck on Saturday.

"I was worried the child or his mother would be hurt. The buildings were all shaking. I was extremely scared. But now I don't feel afraid any more," said Zhou, looking at his child who was wrapped in a blanket on a makeshift bed.

Premier Li Keqiang flew into the disaster zone by helicopter to comfort the injured and displaced, chatting to rescuers and clambering over rubble.

"Treat and heal your wounds with peace of mind," Xinhua quoted Li as telling patients at a hospital. "The government will take care of all the costs for those severely wounded."

Chen Yong, the vice director of the Ya'an city government earthquake response office, told reporters on Saturday that the death toll was unlikely to rise dramatically.

Already poor, many of the earthquake victims said the government was their only hope.

Cao Bangying, 36, whose family had set up mattresses and makeshift cots under a dump truck, said her house had been destroyed.

"Being without a home while having a child of this age is difficult," Cao said, cradling her nine-month-old baby. "We can only rely on the government to help us."

No schools had collapsed, unlike in 2008 when many poorly constructed schools crumpled causing huge public anger, prompting a nationwide campaign of re-building.

Ya'an is a city of 1.5 million people and is considered one of the birthplaces of Chinese tea culture. It is also the home to one of China's main centers for protecting the giant panda.

(Writing by Ben Blanchard, Additional reporting by Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Nick Macfie)

The anger echoes the response to the gang rape of a 23-year-old trainee physiotherapist on a bus on December 16. She later died of her injuries. Protesters are angry authorities have failed to prevent more such crimes.

Police say the child was abducted on Monday last week and kept in captivity by two men in the basement of the building that she lived in with her family. Neighbors say they found her two days later after hearing her cries.

Media reported several other attacks on children over the weekend, including that of a nine-year old girl in the north-eastern state of Assam, who had her throat slit after being gang-raped, TV channels said.

A man was arrested at the weekend for the attack on the five-year-old and is due to appear in a Delhi court this week. The second suspect, in his early 20s, was arrested early on Monday at a relative's house in the eastern state of Bihar on information received from New Delhi, local police chief Rajeev Mishra said.

"He was arrested about 1 a.m.," Mishra said. "...Delhi police and local police made a combined effort to arrest him."

Brutal sex crimes are common in India, which has a population of 1.2 billion. New Delhi has the highest number of sex crimes among major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to police figures.

But most such crimes go unreported and justice is slow, according to social activists, who say successive governments have done little to ensure the safety of women and children.

The December 16 attack brought thousands on to the streets in protest and provoked national debate about the rising number of vicious attacks on women, putting the issue firmly on the national political agenda a year before elections.

Activists planned a fourth day of street action amid heavy security in Delhi after protesters tussled with police and tried to reach the homes of India's leaders at the weekend. The protesters are calling for Delhi's police chief to resign.

The five-year-old girl's name has not been revealed, but media have nicknamed her "Gudiya", or doll. She has undergone surgery and was in stable condition on Monday, a doctor at the hospital where she is being treated told reporters.

The lower house of parliament was adjourned twice after opposition politicians rushed into the building, some demanding discussion on the rape case. Others were protesting against corruption and other issues.

"Though parliament has recently passed tougher legislation to prevent rapes, the evil has not abated and such incidents are still on the rise throughout the country," House Speaker Meira Kumar said before the house was adjourned.

The upper house of parliament was due to hold a debate on violence against women in the afternoon.

(Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel and Annie Banerji; Additional reporting by Nita Bhalla; Editing by Nick Macfie)

• by ThinkProgress
• April 21, 2013

Written by Alyssa Rosenberg

The rush to be the first outlet to break all sorts of news in the wake of the Monday bombing of the Boston Marathon that killed three people and left many others gravely injured has done all sorts of damage to both individuals’ reputations and to our larger community this week.

The New York Post reported that a man of Saudi origin was being questioned by law enforcement in a Boston hospital in the wake of the bombing—it turned out he was merely a survivor of the attack who had been tackled by a bystander who was suspicious of him for doing the rather sensible thing of running away from a scene of carnage.

The Boston Globe and CNN mistakenly reported that a suspect or suspects in the bombing had been arrested, when, as became clear, no such arrests had taken place.

The Post subsequently published on its front page a photo of two men at the marathon with the headline “Bag Men,” suggesting they were wanted in the bombing—it emerged that they were Salah Eddin Barhoum and Yassine Zaime, local teenagers who had hoped to run part of the Marathon route in the wake of the officially-registered runners.

And social media sites, included Reddit, suggested that missing Brown student Sunil Tripathi was a suspect in the bombing, a misidentification amplified significantly after his name was overheard on a police scanner during the escalated manhunt for the real suspects last night, and one that conservative media sites who seized on his name have been slow to correct.

These are serious errors, and they’ll bring a range of consequences, from lawsuits to loss of reputation, for the outlets that reported them or that doubled down on them, seemingly having abandoned standards of journalism like having two sources to confirm a piece of information. And reporters like Pete Williams of NBC News, who have been judicious and often first to be correct about developments in the investigation, will hopefully be rewarded for their care and reliability.

I’m disgusted by the damage that the Post, in particular, has done to the reputations and potential safety of innocent people. And I think that a general rush to claim scoops and exclusives is counterproductive for journalism in general. It’s possible to develop true scoops through deep, proprietary reporting that genuinely reveals new information to the public that other outlets could not offer up because they haven’t done the same research and interviews.

But much of the information claimed as proprietary is nothing of the sort: it’s reproductions of official announcements or information that will shortly become widely available. They’re scoops only in the sense that one reporter has a better wifi connection at a press conference than the competition, or that someone is able to type up a headline faster than other people who have received a press release at the same time. Claiming scoops or exclusives under those circumstances is a cheap way to try to burnish a publication’s credibility that actually does the opposite.

But in this particular case, and to a very limited extent, I understand the rush to get information to readers or viewers that would reassure them that an ongoing terrorist or major criminal event is definitively over. The attack on the Boston Marathon was a horrible act of violence that both the individuals involved and the city where they were killed and wounded will take a long time to recover from. It would be an enormous relief to know that, as awful as the bombing was, it was a discrete event.

If the Saudi man in the hospital was, in fact the bomber, or if the Tsarnaev brothers had been arrested earlier in the week, we would have known that Bostonians were safe from further injury. As someone who grew up in the Boston area and who still has family and friends there, I badly want to know we’re in the clear. And I know my anxiety is nothing compared to that of the people who were waiting on lockdown, and that my feelings are shared by people with no connection to the region at all.

I can’t understand a lot of the tactical decisions journalists have made in response to the desire for revolution, like, say, continuing to tweet things from police dispatches even after law enforcement has asked people to stop to avoid alerting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to information that could help him evade them. And I’ll never understand the racebaiting that encourages places like the Post to pick out people who fit their preferred profile of race and motivations for an attack like this that could be inspired by anything from extreme Islamist ideology to the kind of personal grievances grown to grand scale that fueled attacks like Columbine and the Beltway Sniper shootings.

But I can very much understand wanting to be the outlet that gives people the profound relief that will come from knowing that the Tsarnaevs ability to do harm to the Boston area has run out. Being first with the news isn’t just a matter of winning the race. It’s about winning trust, and readers and viewers’ confidence in your abilities to give them the rare piece of news that can actually foster their sense of security.

This post was originally published by ThinkProgress.

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