WASHINGTON, April 21 (RIA Novosti) - The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bomb attacks cannot speak due to his injuries and investigators are so far unable to question him, officials said, amid reports he could be charged formally in his hospital bed as early as Sunday.
“We don’t know if we’ll ever be able to question the individual,” Boston Mayor Tom Menino said on ABC’s “This Week” program Sunday, referring to the surviving suspect, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
US Sen. Dan Coats, a member of the Intelligence Committee, said it was questionable whether Tsarnaev would ever be able to speak again.
"The information that we have is that there was a shot to the throat," Coats said on the same program. "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."
Medical and law enforcement sources said Tsarnaev remains in serious but stable condition under heavy guard at a Boston hospital. US prosecutors could file formal charges against him on Sunday. Those charges could include terrorism, which can be punishable by execution.
Tsarnaev was taken into custody Friday night while hiding in a boat in the backyard of a house in the Boston suburb of Watertown. The other main suspect in the twin bomb attack last Monday, Tsarnaev’s older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died of wounds sustained in a shoot-out with police earlier Friday.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been informed that police killed his older brother, ABC News reported.
The most serious charge that prosecutors could charge Dzhokhar with is the use of a weapon of mass destruction to kill people, a federal crime which carries a possible death sentence. The state of Massachusetts does not have the death penalty.
Assuming that Tsarnaev can at some point be questioned effectively, this will reportedly be done using the US “public safety exception” which allows investigators to question him without first advising him of his constitutional “Miranda Rights” to remain silent and to be given legal defense.
The “exception” can be used in urgent matters of public safety and could help police quickly find out whether the suspects had ties to other extremists, whether other bombs had been planted and whether there was any planning for future attacks.
Several Republican members of the US Congress argued that Tsarnaev should be tried as an “enemy combatant” by a military commission.
But other lawmakers argued that is the wrong approach. “History tells us we’re doing the right thing. Hundreds, literally hundreds of terrorists, those accused of terrorism have been successfully prosecuted and imprisoned in the United States using the same process that’s being used in this case in Boston,” US Sen. Dick Durbin told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
Authorities are eager to question Tsarnaev to determine a motive and whether the brothers, both ethnic Chechens, received any help, either from inside the United States or overseas.
“There are a lot of leads that law enforcement is still pursuing. There are a lot of questions that all of us have and that law enforcement have yet to answer for us including questions directly to the suspect,” Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick told “Meet the Press.”
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said Sunday in Israel that he has not seen enough intelligence yet to say whether the Boston Marathon bombers were inspired by or connected to a radical group.
“I have not seen any intelligence that would make such a link,” Hagel said. “But as you know, all of the facts are not in. All of the dynamics of intelligence is not complete. And until we know that, until we get more pieces, we won't be able to answer some of those questions.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev visited Russia for six months in 2012 and he may have done so under an alias, Rep. Mike Rogers, the chairman of the US House Intelligence Committee, said on “Meet the Press.”
Tamerlan’s stay in Russia “becomes extremely important” as a key to the investigation, Rogers said.
His visit to Russia “would lead one to believe that that’s probably where he got that final radicalization to push him to commit acts of violence and where he may have received training” in terror techniques, he added.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said Friday it had interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 at the request of an unnamed foreign government – US officials now confirm that government was Russia. The request said Tamerlan Tsarnaev had become a follower of “radical Islam” and implied he was a security risk.
In a statement, the FBI said it “did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign” after questioning Tamerlan Tsarnaev and family members.
A police source in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan told NBC News on Sunday that Russia’s domestic security service reached out to the FBI again last November with further questions about Tamerlan, and gave the FBI a copy of their case file on him.
The source told NBC that Tsarnaev had first popped up on the local police radar in Dagestan last summer after meeting with someone known to be involved in the militant Islamist underground movement in the region.
The FBI never responded, according to the Dagestani police source.
