WASHINGTON, April 20 (RIA Novosti) US prosecutors prepared Saturday to file formal charges, possibly including terrorism, against the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bomb attacks following his dramatic capture and transfer to a hospital where he was in serious condition and under heavy guard.
Investigators and intelligence officials in both the United States and Russia meanwhile searched for clues that could shed further light on motives for the twin bombing attack after US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged to step up US-Russia anti-terror cooperation.
The two suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, were said by US officials to be members of a family originally from Chechnya in the volatile north Caucasus region of Russia where federal forces have been battling Islamist insurgents for years.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured alive but seriously wounded late Friday after an intense manhunt in the Boston suburb of Watertown while his older brother died earlier Friday from injuries sustained in a gun battle with police in the early hours of Friday, officials said.
It was not clear how much time either of the suspects had ever spent in Chechnya itself, a province that has been devastated in two brutal wars in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. But their ties to Chechnya, whether physical or psychological, were emerging as a key element of the investigation.
In a statement late Friday, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) stated that it had interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and family members in 2011 at the request of an unnamed foreign government that said he had become a follower of “radical Islam” and implied he was considered a security risk.
Both the White House and the Kremlin issued statements late Friday and Saturday indicating that there had been, and would continue to be, cooperation between US and Russian security bodies in neutralizing the Boston bombing suspects and trying to prevent future attacks.
A legal debate meanwhile was unfolding in the United States over whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be treated as part of an existential security threat and tried in a military court as an “enemy combatant” or processed through civilian justice channels.
NBC News quoted an unnamed Obama administration official as saying that the administration would invoke the “public safety exception” allowing investigators to question Tsarnaev without advising him of his US constitutional rights known as “Miranda Rights” to remain silent and to be given legal defense.
Such an approach can be used in urgent matters of public security and could help police quickly find out whether the suspected Boston Marathon bombers had connections to other extremists, whether other bombs had been planted and whether there was any planning of future attacks.
Four influential members of the US Congress, including Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain argued in a statement that Tsarnaev should be tried as an “enemy combatant.” Media reports said investigators had so far not informed the wounded suspect of his Miranda Rights.
Alan Dershowitz, a prominent attorney and Harvard law professor, countered however that such an approach reflected an “absolute ignorance of the law” and risked backfiring by providing Tsarnaev’s defense with a clear and simple argument that his basic rights were violated.
“There's no way an American citizen committing a domestic crime in the city of Boston could be tried as an enemy combatant," Dershowitz told CNN talk show host Piers Morgan. "It could never happen.”
CNN and other television networks quoted unnamed justice department officials as saying that Tsarnaev could be charged formally with terrorism under US federal law in his hospital bed as early as Saturday. Conviction on terrorism charges is punishable by death under US law.
The suspect’s exact physical state – whether he was conscious or not – however was not clear. Hospital sources said Tsarnaev was in “serious” condition, but did not elaborate. The reports said he was under heavy guard and added that measures would be taken to make sure he did not try to commit suicide.
