BOSTON - The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings was charged on Monday with using a “weapon of mass destruction” that resulted in three deaths and in injuries to more than 180, as law enforcement officials provided the most detailed account of the bombing to date.
The suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was charged in a criminal complaint and appeared before a federal magistrate who went to his bedside at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, officials said. Tsarnaev is being treated for what the court papers described as possible gunshot wounds to the “head, neck, legs, and hand.”
Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler advised Tsarnaev of his rights and the charges against him, according to a summary of the proceeding provided by the court.
Two U.S. officials said preliminary evidence from an interrogation suggests the suspects were motivated by religion but were apparently not tied to any Islamic terrorist groups.
The two brothers, from southern Russia, practiced Islam.
The U.S. officials spoke Monday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.
In a criminal complaint unsealed Monday in U.S. District Court, Tsarnaev was charged
with one count of “using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction” against persons and property within the United States resulting in death, and one count of “malicious destruction of property by means of an explosive device resulting in death” in last week’s bombings.
If he is convicted of the charges, he could face the death penalty or a prison sentence of up to life.
“Although our investigation is ongoing, today’s charges bring a successful end to a tragic week for the city of Boston and for our country,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.
In addition to the federal charges, the younger Tsarnaev brother is also likely to face state charges in connection with the shooting death of an MIT police officer.
The affidavit accompanying the complaint provided the fullest picture to date of the evidence collected by FBI agents and police detectives.
It also gave new details about the violent last hours that the bombing suspects spent on the run: from a carjacking late Thursday night to a pitched gunbattle with the police Friday morning that left Tsarnaev’s older brother, Tamerlan, 26, dead to the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Friday evening as he lay, hidden and wounded, in a boat in the backyard of a home in Watertown, Mass.
The affidavit, sworn out by Daniel Genck, an FBI special agent assigned to the Joint Terrorist Task Force in Boston, cites surveillance video as it details the movements the brothers made around the time of the marathon bombings. It said that the explosive devices - which it describes as “low-grade explosives that were housed in pressure cookers” that also contained “metallic BB’s and nails” - were placed near metal barriers along Boylston Street, where hundreds of spectators were watching runners as they approached the finish line.
In detail taken from surveillance video, the affidavit describes how a man it refers to as “Bomber Two,” which it identifies as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, walks down Boylston Street toward the finish line with the thumb of his right hand hooked under the strap of his knapsack, and a cell phone in his left hand.
“He then can be seen apparently slipping his knapsack onto the ground,” the affidavit said. “A photograph taken from the opposite side of the street shows the knapsack on the ground at Bomber Two’s feet.”
Video from a nearby restaurant, Forum, shows the bomber remaining in place, checking his cell phone, and even appearing to take a picture with it, the papers said. Then he seems to check his phone again and speak on it.
“A few seconds after he finishes the call, the large crowd of people around him can be seen reacting to the first explosion,” the court papers said. “Virtually every head turns to the east [toward the finish line] and stares in that direction in apparent bewilderment and alarm. Bomber Two, virtually alone among the individuals in front of the restaurant, appears calm. He glances to the east and then calmly but rapidly begins moving to the west, away from the direction of the finish line.”
The FBI did not make it clear whether authorities believe he used his cell phone to detonate one or both of the bombs or whether he was talking to someone.
“He walks away without his knapsack, having left it on the ground where he had been standing,” the court papers said. “Approximately 10 seconds later, an explosion occurs in the location where Bomber Two had placed his knapsack.”
The agent added: “I can discern nothing in that location in the period before the explosion that might have caused that explosion, other than Bomber Two’s knapsack.”
In the court papers, Genck said that he compared driver’s license photos of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to the video images, and that he believed “based on their close physical resemblance, there is probable cause that they are one and the same person.” He also identified the other bomber, called “Bomber One” in court papers, as Tsarnaev’s brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Genck also described how, just seven hours after the FBI had released their pictures and sought the public’s help in identifying them, the brothers emerged shortly before midnight in Cambridge, Mass., when a man was carjacked at gunpoint.
”Did you hear about the Boston explosion?” the affidavit said that one of the suspects told the carjacking victim. “I did that.”
The suspect forced the victim to drive to another location, the affidavit said, where they picked up the other brother and placed something in the car’s trunk. The driver was then moved to the passenger seat while the two suspects conversed in a foreign language, it said.
The affidavit said that the two men took $45 from the driver, and then took his ATM card and password and tried to withdraw money from his account. They then drove to a Shell gas station on Memorial Drive in Cambridge where, when the two suspects got out of the car, the driver escaped.
At the scene of the shootout on Laurel Street, the FBI found two unexploded improvised explosive devices and the remnants of “numerous” exploded devices, the affidavit said.
Those explosive provided more clues: The remnants were similar to those found at the scene of the marathon bombings - and at least one was in a pressure cooker, the affidavit said.
”The pressure cooker was of the same brand as the ones used in the Marathon explosions,” it said, noting that it“also contained metallic BBs contained within an adhesive material as well as green-colored hobby fuse,” like in the marathon bombs.
The affidavit said that investigators later found a white hat and dark jacket in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s dorm room at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth that matched the clothing of the bombing suspect captured on video at the marathon.
FBI interrogators have been communicating with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is in the hospital with what investigators believe is a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the neck, according to a law enforcement official. Nothing that Tsarnaev has said - it was unclear whether he was able to speak, or had been communicating with the investigators in writing - has led investigators to believe that there are other conspirators at large or unexploded devices that have not been recovered, the official said.
The government has also been pressing the Russian government for more details about a Russian request to the FBI in 2011 about whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev had any links to extremist groups. The official described the Russians as “cooperative.”
White House officials said that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev would not be tried as an enemy combatant.
”We will prosecute this terrorist through our civilian system of justice,” said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary.
Carney noted that it was illegal to try a U.S. citizen in a military commission, and that a number of high-profile terrorism cases were handled in the civilian court system, including that of the would be bomber who tried to bring down a passenger jet around Christmas 2009 with explosives in his underwear.
Carney said the government had gotten “valuable intelligence” from suspects kept in the civilian judicial process. “The system has repeatedly proven it can handle” such cases, he said.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s name was included in a federal government travel-screening database in 2011 after the FBI investigated the man at Russia’s request, two law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation said Monday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Monday that Tsarnaev’s name was misspelled and Tsarnaev’s correct name never went into the system.
According to one of the officials, an airline misspelled Tsarnaev’s name when it submitted the list of passengers on Tsarnaev’s flight to Russia in January 2012. Airlines are required to provide the U.S. government with a list of passengers on international flights so the U.S. can check their names through government databases, including the terrorist watch list.
However, an official said, even if his name had been spelled correctly and U.S. officials recognized that Tsarnaev, the subject of a 2011 FBI inquiry, was on the flight, he would have faced no additional scrutiny because the FBI had by that time found no information connecting Tsarnaev to terrorism.
On Monday morning, hundreds of mourners attended a funeral at St. Joseph Church in Medford for Krystle Campbell, the 29-year-old restaurant manager killed near the finish line of the marathon, a race she tried to see every year.
The funeral was attended by her friends and relatives as well as Gov. Deval Patrick and U.S. Rep. Edward Markey. The mourners filed into the church as a single bell tolled. An overflow crowd lined the block.
Vice President Joe Biden will travel to Cambridge, Mass., on Wednesday to attend the memorial service for the MIT police officer killed in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, according to a White House official.
A statewide moment of silence was observed at 2:50 p.m. EDT, exactly a week after the deadly explosions brought a bloody end to the 117th running of the Boston Marathon.
Meanwhile, a New York state senator is advocating torture to extract information from terror suspects including the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing.
Republican Sen. Greg Ball of the Hudson Valley had taken heat for his Twitter posting Friday. He asked who wouldn’t want to use torture against the surviving suspect in the Boston bombing.
He continued to push the position Monday in a tweet and a news release. He says he’s not shy to join those who believe torture is justified in the war on terror to save lives. Information for this article was contributed by Richard A. Oppel Jr., Michael Cooper, William K.
Rashbaum, Jess Bidgood and Peter Baker of The New York Times ; by Denise Lavoie, Steve Peoples, Josh Lederman, Alicia A. Caldwell, Eileen Sullivan and Pete Yost of The Associated Press; and by Christi Parsons of Tribune Washington Bureau.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/23/2013