WATERTOWN, Massachusetts — A 19-year-old suspected of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombings with his older brother was captured by police after a day-long manhunt that closed down the city and turned a working-class suburb into a virtual military zone.
—Reuters
The capture sent waves of relief and jubilation through Boston and the suburb of Watertown, where armoured vehicles roamed the streets and helicopters flew overhead through the day. Residents and police officers cheered and clapped when the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was taken alive after a gunfight.
Tsarnaev had been hiding in the stern of a boat parked in the backyard of a house in Watertown, police said. A resident called police after spotting blood on the boat.
President Barack Obama told reporters at the White House after the suspect’s capture that questions remained from the bombings, including whether the two suspects received any help.
Monday’s bombing, described by Obama as an act of terrorism, was the worst such attack on US soil since September 11 2001, and rattled nerves across the United States.
The brothers, ethnic Chechens who once lived in Russia, are suspected of setting off bombs made in pressure cookers and packed with ball bearings and nails at the crowded finish line of Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring 176.
The family of Martin Richard, an eight-year-old boy killed in the blast, welcomed the arrest.
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“Tonight, our community is once again safe from these two men,” the family said in a statement.
The older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev (26), was killed in a shootout with police, less than a mile from where Friday night’s capture took place.
After combing through a mass of pictures and video from the site in the minutes before the bombing, the FBI had publicised pictures of the two men and asked the public for help in identifying them.
Just hours later, events began to unfold fast with the fatal shooting of a police officer on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and finally the Watertown firefight, during which police say the brothers threw bombs at officers. Tamerlan suffered fatal wounds, while Dzhokhar escaped on foot.
The brothers had not been under surveillance as possible militants, US government officials said.
FBI questioned tamerlan in 2011 The FBI said in a statement that in 2011 it interviewed Tamerlan at the request of a foreign government, which it did not identify.
“The request stated that it was 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 country’s region to join unspecified underground groups,” the FBI statement said.
The matter was closed because interviews with Tamerlan and family members “did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign”.
The FBI statement was the first evidence that the family had come to security officials’ attention after they emigrated to the United States about a decade ago. It might raise questions about whether authorities missed potential warning signs.
