Boston Terrorist Hospitalized, Unable to Speak

Bombers likely sought more attacks

The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings remained in serious condition in the hospital on Sunday, unable to speak due to injuries to his neck and tongue sustained while on the run from police, officials said.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation was still unable to interview Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told CBS, and authorities may never be able to speak with him, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said.

The suspect was in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center while U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, the federal prosecutor for the Boston area, was working on filing criminal charges, Davis said.

Tsarnaev was shot in the throat and had tongue damage, said a source close to the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“We don’t know if we’ll ever be able to question the individual,” Menino told ABC. He did not elaborate.

Tsarnaev will be defended by the Federal Public Defender Office, which had yet to issue any public statements on the case.

Investigators were seeking a motive for the Boston Marathon bombings and whether others were involved besides the ethnic Chechen brothers they suspect carried out the attacks.

The two brothers may have been readying for a second attack at the time of the shootout, Davis told CBS. Early indications were that the brothers acted alone, Davis and other officials said.

When police were able to move in after the hail of bullets stopped, they found unexploded devices littering the street and one in the carjacked SUV that the brothers had been driving. The devices contained the same type of shrapnel used in the marathon bombs.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev traveled to Moscow in January 2012 and spent six months in the region, a law enforcement source said. It was unclear if he could have had contact with terrorist Islamist groups in southern Russia’s restive Caucasus region.

A group leading an Islamist insurgency against Russia said on Sunday it was not at war with the United States, distancing itself from last week’s Boston bombing.

The insurgency is rooted in two separatist wars that Russian troops waged against Chechen separatists following the fall of the Soviet Union.

The role of the FBI is also being questioned after the agency said it had interviewed Tamerlan in 2011 after Russian security services raised concerns he followed radical Islam. The FBI said it did not find any “terrorism activity” at that time.

The bombings prompted contact between the U.S. and Russia, and the Kremlin said on Saturday the presidents of both countries agreed by telephone to increase cooperation on counterterrorism.

This article appeared in print on page 1 of the April 22nd, 2013 edition of Hamodia.