MOSCOW, May 3 (RIA Novosti) - The Tsarnaev brothers, suspected of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombings, originally planned to detonate their explosive devices on July 4, American media reported Thursday citing officials with knowledge of the surviving suspect’s interrogation.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his brother Dzhokhar, 19, are accused of planting bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15 that killed three people and injured more than 200. Tamerlan died in a shootout with police, while Dzhokhar was wounded and put in a prison hospital. The brothers, who come from a family of ethnic Chechens, lived in Dagestan, a violence-ridden republic in Russia’s North Caucasus region, and the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan before moving to the United States nearly a decade ago.
NBC News quoted officials as saying Dzhokhar allegedly told his interrogators soon after his detention that the original plan he and his brother had was to set off their explosives on July 4, but that the brothers finished the bombs sooner than they expected, and decided to carry out the attack earlier, on Patriot's Day, a holiday in Boston that hosts the marathon and other events.
The bombs were produced in the house in Cambridge, Mass., where Tamerlan Tsarnaev lived with his wife and daughter, CNN said, also citing a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation.
Investigators could not immediately say whether they suspected Tsarnaev’s widow Katherine Russell of having had any prior information about his plans, the report said. Russell’s attorney said his client denied any knowledge of the attacks.
Federal prosecutors in Boston said Wednesday US authorities have arrested three college friends of the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect, two Kazakh men and a US citizen, on suspicion of lying to investigators and obstructing justice in connection with the deadly bombing.
(The article has been updated from an earlier version to include information about where the bombs were produced, and fixed to say Tsarnaev had a daughter, not a son.)
