Boston suspect caught,focus shifts to brother’s Chechnya visit

With the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev taken alive,though grievously wounded the investigation has turned to questions about the mens motives,and to the significance of a trip elder brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev took to Chechnya.

President Barack Obama vowed investigators would solve the mystery. The families of those killed so senselessly deserve answers, said Obama,who branded the suspects terrorists.

During a long night of violence Thursday and into Friday (local time),the brothers killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer,severely wounded another lawman and hurled explosives at the police in a desperate getaway attempt.

Late Friday,less than an hour after authorities said the search for Dzhokhar had proved fruitless,they tracked down the 19-year-old student holed up in the boat. He was weakened by a gunshot wound after fleeing on foot from the long shootout with the police.

Dzhokhar was hospitalised in a serious condition,unable to be questioned about his motives.

The Boston police announced via Twitter that Dzhokhar was in custody. They later wrote: CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over.

The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev,26,died in the shootout early in the day. At one point,he was run over by his younger brother in a car as he lay wounded.

The breakthrough came when a man in Watertown saw blood on a boat parked in a yard and pulled back the tarp to see a man covered in blood,authorities said. The resident called authorities and when police arrived,they tried to talk Dzhokhar into getting out of the boat,said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis.

He was not communicative, Davis said. Instead,he said,there was an exchange of gunfire the final volley of one of the biggest manhunts in American history.

Tamerlan travelled to Russia for six months in 2012 (returning on July 17). Law enforcement officials are now conducting a review of that trip to see if he might have met with extremists or received training from them while abroad.

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted the brothers father Anzor Tsarnaev about the FBIs close questioning,two or three times,of Tamerlan while he was in Russia. The father recalled that the agents told his son,We know what you read,what you drink,what you eat,where you go. He said they had told his son that the questioning is prophylactic,so that no one sets off bombs on the streets of Boston,so that our children could peacefully go to school.

Those comments,he said,disturbed him. This conversation took place a year and a half ago, he said. But there is a question: Why would they talk about it then?

The Boston police Saturday said three other people were taken into custody for questioning at an off-campus housing complex at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth where the younger brother may have lived. Students said Dzhokhar was on campus this week after the Boston Marathon bombing.

Obama said the capture closed an important chapter in this tragedy,but urged people not to rush to judgment about the attackers motivations not about the motivations of these individuals,certainly not about entire groups of people.

In his weekly address,the President applauded the heroism and kindness on display in the aftermath of the bombings. Americans refuse to be terrorised, he said. Ultimately,thats what well remember from this week.

Dzhokhar,who was wounded in the leg and neck and had lost a great deal of blood when he was captured,is likely to face charges stemming from both the bombings and the shooting,possibly including the use of weapons of mass destruction,an applicable charge for the detonation of a bomb. That charge,the official said,carries a maximum penalty of death.

As federal officials step up their investigation,Tamerlans trip to Russia and Chechnya in 2012 will be in focus. In a statement,the FBI Friday said that in early 2011,a foreign government acknowledged by officials to be Russia asked for information about Tamerlan based on information that he was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer,and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the countrys region to join unspecified underground groups.

The bureau responded to the request by checking US government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications,possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical activity,associations with other persons of interest,travel history and plans,and education history,the statement explained. The bureau also interviewed Tamerlan and family members.

According to the statement,The FBI did not find any terrorism activity,domestic or foreign,and conveyed those findings to the foreign government by the summer of 2011.

Father Anzor Tsarnaev told a Russian interviewer that Tamerlan had spent most of his time in Russia with him in Makhachkala,the capital of the Dagestan region. But we went to Chechnya to visit relatives,he added.

Mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told an interviewer on Russia Today that the FBI had questioned Tamerlan closely. She recalled that the agents had told her that he was an excellent boy,but at the same time,they told me he is getting information from really extremist sites.

Expressing confidence in her sons innocence,Zubeidat added: I am 100 per cent sure this is a set-up. When they were growing up,she said,nobody talked about terrorism. While her older son got involved in religion,religious politics five years ago,she added,he never told me that he would be on the side of jihad.

It was in the aftermath of the visit to Dagestan and Chechnya,however,that the most obvious alienation emerged. One month after Tamerlan returned to the US,a YouTube page that appeared to belong to him was created and featured multiple jihadi videos that he had endorsed in the past six months. One video featured the preaching of Abdul al-Hamid al-Juhani,an important ideologue in Chechnya; another focused on Feiz Mohammad,an extremist Salafi Lebanese preacher based in Australia. He also created a playlist of songs by a Russian musical artist,Timur Mucuraev,one of which promotes jihad,according to the SITE Intelligence Group,which monitors statements by jihadists.

Anzor and Dzhokhar first came to the US legally in April 2002 on 90-day tourist visas. Once in this country,the father had applied for political asylum,claiming he feared persecution based on his ties to Chechnya. Dzhokhar,who was eight,applied for asylum under his fathers petition,and became a naturalised citizen on September 11 last year. Tamerlan came to the US later,and applied for American citizenship on September 5 last year.

Although Anzor has said Tamerlans citizenship application had been denied and certainly would have been if he were under suspicion as a potential terrorist officials said it was still in process.

As a routine part of his application,Tamerlan was also subject to a criminal-background check by the FBI. Authorities confirmed that he had been involved in a domestic violence incident while he was a resident with a green card. A review of the incident delayed his citizenship application,the officials said.

The bloody endgame to the Boston manhunt came four days after the marathon bombing and just a day after the FBI released surveillance-camera images of two young men suspected of planting the pressure-cooker explosives that killed three people and wounded more than 180.

The FBI website was swamped with tips after the release of the photos 300,000 hits per minute but what role those played in the capture was unclear. State Police spokesman Dave Procopio said the police realised they were dealing with the bombing suspects based on what the two men told a carjacking victim during their long night of crime.

Watertown residents poured out of their homes and lined the streets to cheer police vehicles as they rolled away from the scene of Dzhokhars capture on Friday. Celebratory bells rang from a church tower. Teenagers waved American flags. Drivers honked.

Tonight our family applauds the entire law enforcement community for a job well done,and trust that our justice system will now do its job, said the family of eight-year-old Martin Richard,who died in the bombing.

NYT,with inputs from AP