Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's pre-Miranda confession: Will it hurt the prosecution's case?

Tsarnaev stopped talking once he was read his Miranda rights. That could create headaches for the prosecution down the road

From his hospital bed, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev admitted to authoritiesthat his older brother had recruited him to plant two bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, according to The Associated Press. The problem? The confession came before he was read his Miranda rights.

Tsarnaev apparently exercised his right to remain silent after a magistrate judge and a representative from the U.S. Attorney's office came into his room and read him his Miranda rights, an unnamed law enforcement official told the AP.

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Now the question is whether everything he said before that will be admissible in court. The admissibility of Tsarnaev's reported confession hinges on the the validity of the public-safety exemption invoked by police. That exemption allows officials to delay someone's Miranda rights when there is a continued threat to public safety — like, say, when you have a terrorist in custody who might be able to tell you about future attacks.

The court will ultimately decide whether Tsarnaev's pre-Miranda confession is admissible, says The Atlantic's Adam Goodman:

The authorities are not constitutionally obligated to Mirandize Tsarnaev anyway, so long as they do not intend to admit Tsarnaev's statements at trial. What the public-safety exception does — if and only if a court determines that the exception was properly invoked — is render Tsarnaev's unwarned statements admissible as evidence where they otherwise would not be.

The authorities handling Tsarnaev's case might reasonably determine that, even if a court ultimately disapproves their invocation of the public-safety exception and suppresses whatever statements they seek to admit, the costs of Mirandizing Tsarnaev (his possible noncooperation) far outstrip the benefits of doing so (being able to use his incriminating statements in court). [The Atlantic]

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Problems could arise, however, if Tsarnaev's public defender, 21-year veteran Miriam Conrad, starts finding holes in the prosecution's case. Attorney Geoffrey Fieger told The Boston Herald that denying Tsarnaev his Miranda rights could actually come back to hurt the prosecution in the end:

This case is ripe for somebody who's got the courage to stand up and talk about the system and the railroading of criminal defendants. He's been denied the right to a fair trial. And America's... cheering like it was some kind of sporting event. That wasn't a very flattering image to the rest of the world. [Boston Herald]

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Putin: Boston bombing shows West's mistake

MOSCOW (AP) — The Boston bombings should spur stronger security cooperation between Moscow and Washington, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday, adding that they also show that theWest was wrong in supporting militants in Chechnya.

Putin said that "this tragedy should push us closer in fending off common threats, including terrorism, which is one of the biggest and most dangerous of them."

The two brothers accused of the Boston bombings are ethnic Chechens who had lived in the U.S. for more than a decade.

Putin warned against trying to find the roots for the Boston tragedy in the suffering endured by the Chechen people, particularly in mass deportations of Chechens to Siberia and Central Asia on Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's orders. "The cause isn't in their ethnicity or religion, it's in their extremist sentiments," he said.

Speaking in an annual call-in show on state television, Putin criticized the West for refusing to declareChechen militants terrorists and for offering them political and financial assistance in the past.

"I always felt indignation when our Western partners and Western media were referring to terrorists who conducted brutal and bloody crimes on the territory of Russia as rebels," Putin said.

The U.S. has urged the Kremlin to seek a political settlement in Chechnya and criticized rights abuses by Russian troops during the two separatist wars since 1994, which spawned an Islamic insurgency that has engulfed the entire region.

It also provided humanitarian aid to the region during the high points of fighting there in the 1990s and the early 2000s.

Russian officials have repeatedly claimed that rebels in Chechnya have close links with al-Qaida. They say dozens of fighters from Arab countries trickled into the region during the fighting there, while some Chechen militants have gone to fight in Afghanistan.

Putin said the West should have cooperated more actively with Russia in combatting terror.

"We always have said that we shouldn't limit ourselves to declarations about terrorism being a common threat and engage in closer cooperation," he said. "Now these two criminals have proven the correctness of our thesis."

Finding Misha: Could the mystery man who radicalized Tamerlan Tsarnaev have been an FBI informant?

There is hardly definitive evidence. But when you break down what we do know, this idea isn't nearly as far-fetched as other conspiracy theories circulating the web.

Earlier this week, Andrew Kaczynski, @BuzzFeedAndrew, posted "6 Mind-blowingly Ridiculous Conspiracy Theories Surrounding the Boston Bombing." They were for the most part what one finds at Infowars or Reddit. One theory intrigued me: #2 — "The Tsarnaev brothers were double agents." It was as unsubstantiated as the others but it just missed the mark of a far more plausible theory which didn't come to me until Wednesday morning as I drove into work.

During closed door Congressional testimony on Tuesday, authorities fleshed out what they knew about Tamerlan Tsarnaev before the Boston marathon bombings:

Attention has turned to whether U.S. security officials paid enough heed to Tamerlan Tsarnaevhaving been flagged as a possible Islamist radical by Russia. The FBI interviewed him in 2011 but did not find enough cause to continue investigating.

His name was listed on the U.S. government's highly classified central database of people it views as potential terrorists, sources close to the bombing investigation said. The list is vast, including about 500,000 people, which means that not everyone on the list is closely monitored.

Members of Congress briefed by law enforcement and media reports citing unidentified sources indicate Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told investigators from his hospital bed that the brothers grew radical from anti-U.S. material on the internet and acted without assistance from any foreign or domestic militant groups.

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According to the United States federal government, Russia advised the U.S. of the concerns it had about Tamerlan, as a result the FBI interviewed him in 2011, and that was it. Other than two trips to Dagestan, his family life and his boxing career, nothing much has been known publicly about Tamerlan.

Then I read a lengthy article by Adam Goldman, and others, at the Associated Press, "Bomb Suspect Influenced by Mysterious Radical," which attempted to piece together what it knew. It took me a little while to get a handle on its significance.

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In the years before the Boston Marathon bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev fell under the influence of a new friend, a Muslim convert who steered the religiously apathetic young man toward a strict strain of Islam, family members said.

Under the tutelage of a friend known to the Tsarnaev family only as Misha, Tamerlan gave up boxing and stopped studying music, his family said. He began opposing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He turned to websites and literature claiming that the CIA was behind the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Jews controlled the world.

"Somehow, he just took his brain," said Tamerlan's uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, who recalled conversations with Tamerlan's worried father about Misha's influence. Efforts over several days by The Associated Press to identify and interview Misha have been unsuccessful.

Tamerlan's relationship with Misha could be a clue in understanding the motives behind his religious transformation and, ultimately, the attack itself. Two U.S. officials say he had no tie to terrorist groups.

Throughout his religious makeover, Tamerlan maintained a strong influence over his siblings, including Dzhokhar, who investigators say carried out the deadly attack by his older brother's side, killing three and injuring 264 people. [Associated Press]

Then, in 2008 or 2009, Tamerlan met Misha, a slightly older, heavyset bald man with a long reddish beard. Khozhugov didn't know where they'd met but believed they attended a Boston-area mosque together. Misha was an Armenian native and a convert to Islam and quickly began influencing his new friend, family members said.

Once, Khozhugov said, Misha came to the family home outside Boston and sat in the kitchen, chatting with Tamerlan for hours.

"Misha was telling him what is Islam, what is good in Islam, what is bad in Islam," said Khozhugov, who said he was present for the conversation. "This is the best religion and that's it. Mohammed said this and Mohammed said that."

The conversation continued until Tamerlan's father, Anzor, came home from work.

"It was late, like midnight," Khozhugov said. "His father comes in and says, 'Why is Misha here so late and still in our house?' He asked it politely. Tamerlan was so much into the conversation he didn't listen."

Khozhugov said Tamerlan's mother, Zubeidat, told him not to worry.

"'Don't interrupt them,'" Khozhugov recalled the mother saying. "'They're talking about religion and good things. Misha is teaching him to be good and nice.'"

As time went on, Tamerlan and his father argued about the young man's new beliefs.

"When Misha would start talking, Tamerlan would stop talking and listen. It upset his father because Tamerlan wouldn't listen to him as much," Khozhugov said. "He would listen to this guy from the mosque who was preaching to him."

Anzor became so concerned that he called his brother, worried about Misha's effects.

"I heard about nobody else but this convert," Tsarni said. "The seed for changing his views was planted right there in Cambridge."

It was not immediately clear whether the FBI has spoken to Misha or was attempting to.

Tsarnaev became an ardent reader of jihadist websites and extremist propaganda, two U.S. officials said. He read Inspire magazine, an English-language online publication produced by al-Qaida's Yemen affiliate. [Associated Press]

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If the FBI was doing its job, how is it that they could learn of Tamerlan, interview him, conclude he is not a threat and place him in TIDE and the entire time have no clue about Misha? Natural questions would be: "How long have you held such strong beliefs?" "Really, that recently?" "Who gave you these ideas?"

Those were my thoughts rather unformed thoughts when I recalled Miami. In 2006, the feds famously arrested seven young men, five Americans and two Haitian nationals, in Miami and charged them with plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago:

The group pledged allegiance to al Qaeda and were provided money to prepare the bombing plan. But the young men, who became known as the Liberty City 7, did not operate on their own. According toNBC's reporting, the Department of Justice claimed:

[Nasreal] Batiste met several times in December 2005 with a person purporting to be an al-Qaida member and asked for boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios, vehicles and $50,000 in cash to help him build an "'Islamic Army' to wage jihad'," the indictment said. It said that Batiste said he would use his 'soldiers' to destroy the Sears Tower.

Gonzales said "the individual they thought was a member of al-Qaida was present at their meetings and in actuality he was working with the South Florida Joint Terrorism Task Force." [NBC]

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, separating serious terrorist plotters from delusional dreamers has proved one of the FBI's most challenging tasks. The effort is complicated by the bureau's frequent use of informants who sometimes play active roles in the plotting. [Washington Post]

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As Mother Jones explained, though, the case against the seven could hardly have gotten off the ground without the ready assistance of the federal government's informants, Abbas al-Saidi and Elie Assad, who had worked for the FBI on other cases:

A few of the Seas of David men did recon the FBI field office in Miami. But the mission had been conceived by Assad, the van and a digital camera both provided by Assad — that is, the FBI.

When Assad failed to deliver the cash and with the Seas of David growing increasingly skeptical about his claims, he tried to assuage them by swearing them into Al Qaeda, which he did — in a warehouse rented and wired for video by the FBI.

The oath became the government's piéce de rèsistance. [Mother Jones]

Once someone has signed on as an informant, the first assignment is often a fishing expedition. Informants have said in court testimony that FBI handlers have tasked them with infiltrating mosques without a specific target or "predicate" — the term of art for the reason why someone is investigated. They were, they say, directed to surveil law-abiding Americans with no indication of criminal intent. [Mother Jones]

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According to Aaronson, the FBI "maintains a roster of 15,000 spies — many of them tasked… with infiltrating Muslim communities." In addition, for every officially recognized informant there are three unofficial informants. During the Mother Jones investigation with the University of California, Berkeley, they examined 508 terrorism-related cases. Of those, "nearly half the prosecutions involved the use of informants." Sting operations were used in cases brought against 158 defendants. The upshot is that "with three exceptions, all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings"

Aaronson described how the sting is typically started with the FBI assigning an informant to approach "the target posing as a radical." As the relationship develops, "the operative will propose a plot, provide, explosives, even lead the target in a fake oath to Al Qaeda. Once enough incriminating information has been gathered, there's an arrest — and a press conference announcing another foiled plot." The question always remains, though, to what degree the plots come about from the target's own mind rather than through the machinations of the informant/agent provocateur.

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This is a methodology which the FBI has used consistently since 9/11. Is it far-fetched to surmise that Misha was another al-Saidi or Assad — used by the government to cozy up to Tamerlan and put ideas in his head? Suppose Tamerlan, though growing sympathetic, never got to the point of wanting to formulate a plot or wanting to take an oath because he was busy boxing, or buying nice scarves or converting a college girl from Rhode Island? Did the FBI determine that Tamerlan was unlikely to adopt Misha's proposals and decided to move on to a riper target? We don't know, but remember, we never hear of the secret operations that don't lead to arrests.

When Misha, or whatever his real name was, got nowhere did he slip back into the night without the FBI knowing that the seeds of destruction had now been planted in Tamerlan's head? Was it only later, once Tamerlan had gone back another time to Dagestan, or began steering his little brother towards radicalism, that the plot was hatched? After all, unlike the Liberty City 7, they didn't need $50,000 to bomb the Sears Tower. Al that was needed was a $100 for a pressure cooker and fireworks from New Hampshire.

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This is not to lay claim to a certain "conspiracy" theory. I am a lawyer, so I take the facts as they are known rather than as I would like them to be. These are serious concerns, though, which merit further explanation because of what the public has recently learned:

1. The FBI did know about Tamerlan years ago thanks to Russia's security services.
2. The FBI contacted Tamerlan and put him on the terrorism watch list.
3. Tamerlan, like the Liberty City 7, fell under the spell of a foreigner who behaved as if he had his best spiritual interests at heart.
4. The government was aware Tamerlan traveled back and forth to Dagestan.
5. Now no one seems to be able to identify or place Misha anywhere.

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With all those factors, why wouldn't the government have attempted to target Tamerlan?

In the experience I had as a criminal defense attorney, federal informants are moved around the country at will. They are like ghosts. Their names aren't real. They are from nowhere. They aren't very accountable for their actions as long they get their man.

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It would be disturbing if Tamerlan Tsarnaev — and by extension his brother — was the product of an abandoned government sting operation, for we will never know if Tamerlan would have set on down the path of radicalism without the guiding hand of the red-bearded Misha.

On the other hand, if Tamerlan was targeted by the FBI through Misha with the belief he was already vulnerable to developing into an active terrorist and then moved on, they forgot what one FBI agent told Aaronson: "Sometimes, that step takes 10 years. Other times, it takes 10 minutes." To have targeted and molded and then forgotten would be negligence of the highest degree.

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(I asked the FBI about my theory. Here's what they said: "Per long standing policy, the FBI does not provide information on who may or may not be an informant. All public statements regarding the Boston Bombing investigation are located on www.fbi.gov.")

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Boston Bombing Suspects' Mom Regrets Move to US

Boston Bombing Suspects' Mom Regrets Move to US (ABC News)

The mother of the Boston bombing suspects said she will never accept the accusations that her sons carried out last week's deadly attack.

"No. I don't and I won't," Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told reporters here today. "Never.

"I'm sure that my kids were not involved in anything," she added, saying she would need more proof, but quickly adding that anything could be forged.

She also expressed regret for having gone to America, where she and husband Anzor Tsarnaev moved as refugees more than a decade ago.

"Why did I even go there?" the mother asked.

"We thought America was going to protect us. America took my kids away from me."

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She went on to dismiss reports that her younger son, Dzhokhar, had already spoken about how the brothers planned the attack, questioning the veracity of news reports.

The mother spoke at an emotional news conference here alongside her husband. They grieved for their sons, but were at times visibly angry, pounding the table as they demanded more evidence that their sons were guilty, as well as proof that their elder son, Tamerlan, was not killed by police after being captured alive.

The couple cited videos they had seen on the Internet that claim to show Tamerlan being detained by police, followed by a gruesome photo of a naked dead body.

The father said he planned to travel soon to Boston to collect Tamerlan's body. He said they do not yet know whether they will bury him here or in the United States.

The parents also expressed frustration that they had been told they would not be allowed to visit Dzhokhar, the younger brother who was captured alive.

They said Dzhokhar, who suffered severe neck wounds, was being fed through a tube.

The mother, meanwhile, plans to remain in Dagestan for now. She denied the decision to stay behind was motivated by a fear that she could be arrested in the United States because of an outstanding warrant related to charges of shoplifting.

She called that incident "minor" and said that lawyers had secured some assurances that she would not be detained upon arrival.

The parents insisted that Tamerlan's trip to this region last year was only to visit family he had not seen in more than a decade and to attend a relative's wedding.

The father said it was impossible for Tamerlan to have made contact with extremists or militants during his six-month visit, saying his son never left his side during the three months they overlapped here.

Investigators want to know more about what Tamerlan did here during that time, concerned that he could have become radicalized in this restive region that is home to a militant Islamist uprising.

The FBI interviewed the parents this week in an effort to learn more about their sons and to inquire about Tamerlan's visit to Dagestan.

It was not the first time the parents had been questioned about Tamerlan by the FBI.

In 2011, the bureau, acting on a request from the Russian government, interviewed Tamerlan about possible links to extremists and militants abroad. In a statement Friday, the FBI said it found nothing suspicious at the time.

Tamerlan's parents, meanwhile, said his visit was a peaceful one. They say he enjoyed re-discovering the region where he lived for a few months as young teenager, visiting the beach and getting to know long-lost relatives.

The father said they attended prayers at several mosques around town, including the main mosque in downtown Makhachkala, as well as others, like a Salafist mosque on Katrova Street, that has drawn the eye of authorities.

The Imam there told ABC News Wednesday that they had never seen Tamerlan there, but noted that they have many people who attend prayers, with the faithful often forced to pray out in the street for lack of space.

The mother denied the mosque was as radical as some have claimed, asking why, then, it was still allowed to operate.

The mother said she never detected signs that her son had become radical.

She denied reports that a mysterious man named Misha, an Armenian convert to Islam, had radicalized Tamerlan.

She described Misha, whose last name and identity remain a mystery, as "the nicest man."

She said Tamerlan had befriended him at the mosque and he came to their house at least twice. While there, Misha showed them how to pray and the mother said that she was ashamed a convert knew Islamic traditions better than she did.

After Misha left, she said they were in awe of him and sought to follow his example.

Also Read

FILE - In this Nov. 6, 2012 file photo, rubble fills Sharia al-Sweiqa, inside the Old City of Aleppo, Syria. A year after the opposition fighters stormed Aleppo, taking control of several districts in the city of three million and capturing much of its surrounding towns and villages, the industrial zones that constituted 60 percent of Syrian pre-war economy, are mostly deserted. Some have been looted and several have been burnt down. (AP Photo/Monica Prieto, File)

FILE -- In this Nov. 6, 2012 file photo, a private house, seriously damage by shelling and fighting, is seen in the Old City of Aleppo, Syria. A year after the opposition fighters stormed Aleppo, taking control of several districts in the city of three million and capturing much of its surrounding towns and villages, the industrial zones that constituted 60 percent of Syrian pre-war economy, are mostly deserted. Some have been looted and several have been burnt down. (AP Photo/Monica Prieto, File)

BEIRUT (AP) — With the Syrian civil war edging closer toDamascus, the capital's business elite long cultivated by PresidentBashar Assad as a support for his regime is starting to join the exodus from the country.

Popular restaurants and high-end stores in Damascus have shut down as their owners move to Beirut and reopen there. They become the latest part of the flight of the Syrian upper class, thousands of whom are believed to have moved abroad over the past year, mainly to Lebanon, Turkey and the Gulf.

Syrian merchants and factory owners have rented apartments in the Lebanese capital as well as Dubai and Cairo. Many skyscrapers dotting Lebanon's famed Mediterranean corniche are known to have been rented out to Syrians at exorbitant prices.

Most still largely back Assad and hope to return, but their flight is a sign of the deep worry over the direction the fight has taken.

"Most people in Damascus have lost hope," said Reema, a chemical engineer. She fled the capital last summer and now lives in Beirut, managing a factory in one of Damascus' industrial zones remotely, via Skype. At first, "we could hear the bombs from around Damascus but we knew that they were far away so we got on with our lives ... Now, the war is everywhere."

She said she has seen a new influx of Damascus residents into Beirut and expects more to come once schools go on summer vacation and well-off Damascene families feel freer to pack up. Reema spoke on condition she be identified only by her first name for fear of reprisals against her business or collague still in Syria.

"Some who have been coming back and forth between Beirut and Damascus are giving up and want to stay to avoid the hassles of checkpoints and ID checks and fear of being taken by groups who just pick people up from the streets," she said, adding that residents blame both regime and opposition-linked groups for disappearances.

Several other businessmen who fled more recently to Beirut spoke to The Associated Press of growing numbers of the elite choosing to leave for the time being. But they refused to give details or be quoted because of worries over their enterprises back home.

The extent of new departures was impossible to confirm. The Damascus area has seen some waves of violence previously over the past two years. But in the past few months it has intensified, with heavy fighting in towns and villages on the capital's outskirts and frequent barrages of rockets and mortars into the city itself. The industrial zones in Damascus are largely protected by government troops. But crippling security measures and a network of checkpoints slow down industry. Lack of electricity and a spike in kidnappings of wealthy residents is also prompting some to move abroad.

More than 1 million Syrians have fled the country to escape the civil war, now its third year. The bulk of them are poor, largely from the country's Sunni Muslim majority that makes up the backbone of the rebellion, leaving homes battered by fighting between rebels and regime forces around the country and crossing into Jordan, Turkey or Lebanon.

Syria's powerful and monied elite have long had a complicated history with the regime. The rich and powerful industrialists, merchants and factory owners are mostly secular Sunni Muslims, mainly from families who were largely allowed to operate in Aleppo, Syria's economic engine, and in Damascus, without government interference while the Assad family's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, kept its grip on political power.

When the uprising against his rule erupted in March 2011, most stuck by the president. That support has been strained by two years of bloodshed that has killed an estimate 70,000 people and disrupted business and life. But many deeply distrust the rebels because of the strength of Islamic hardliners and the lack of a cohesive leadership.

"With the fighting ripping apart the social fabric of cities, the elite is increasingly very confused because they can't support the regime any more but also cannot embrace the rebels, who are looking to take over their properties," said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma.

Syria's urban elite has been concentrated in the northern city of Aleppo and the capital Damascus. Most of the rebels come from the underdeveloped countryside — poor, religiously conservative and angry over years of economic marginalization they say was enforced by the old merchant families and regime-linked industrialists.

The first waves of the elite leaving came last year, from Aleppo and the central city of Homs. Now, industrial zones in those cities packed with textile, plastics, pharmaceutical and cosmetics manufacturers stand virtually deserted.

Aleppo, the country's largest city, became a battle zone last summer when the rebels launched an offensive there. Since then, it has been torn apart by months of grinding urban warfare that has devastated the city and left it carved into rebel- and regime-held zones.

Even before the fighting started in Aleppo, businessmen say rebel fighters from the countryside came to factories demanding the owners pay up.

The owner of an Aleppo plastics factory said that about a year ago, rebels came and told him, "You need to support our revolution or your factory will burn down." He negotiated with them and they walked out with a safe containing 400,000 Syrian pounds, about $5,700.

Three months later, he locked the factory doors and moved to the United States, managing his businesses from there. He spoke on condition he be identified only by his first name, George, fearing harassment of his family and his associates, who still travel to Syria from Lebanon and Turkey.

George and his father, who has moved to Turkey to set up a business, pay rent on an apartment inBeirut for George's sister, he said.

George said the "class component" of the revolution became impossible to ignore. To the rebels, "there was 100 percent correlation between the regime and the rich," he said. "Having money meant you were in bed with the regime."

Few industrialists in Damascus and Aleppo have entirely shut down their business, choosing instead to run them remotely in hopes fighting will subside and they can return.

"For us to go back, the government would have to win this decisively and put business where they were," George said.

Most of the business community is in a "wait and see mode," said Ayham Kamel, a Middle East analyst at the Eurasia Group in London.

"The Syrian business community still views its role in the rebuilding Syria as vital," Kamel said. "There is a prevalent thought among the elite that they will return and re-establish their business enterprises once the war is over."

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