Email

Boston Marathon bombing suspect moved to prison

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev spent nearly a week being treated at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

The Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been transferred from hospital to prison, US police say.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev spent nearly a week being treated at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

The US Marshals Service said the 19-year-old had been moved from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to a facility at Fort Devens, Massachusetts.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been in hospital since his arrest following a massive police manhunt a week ago.

He was found badly injured in a boat in a suburban backyard. His brother Tamerlan was killed during the hunt.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was charged, by a magistrate at his hospital bedside earlier this week, with using a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property resulting in death.

He could be sentenced to death if convicted on either count.

Having suffered apparent gunshot wounds to the head, neck, legs and hand, he was reported to have responded to questions in writing because a throat wound left him unable to speak.

The two bombs, placed in pressure cookers and left close to the finishing line of the Boston Marathon on 15 April, killed three people and wounded more than 260.

Many of the injured have also been treated at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and were reported to be unhappy at having Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the same building.

The US Marshals Service said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was taken overnight to the Federal Medical Center Devens some 40 miles (65km) west of Boston.

The facility, on the decommissioned Fort Devens US Army base, treats federal prisoners and detainees who require specialised long-term medical or mental health care, the Associated Press reports.

Foiled plan

New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said on Thursday that the Tsarnaev brothers still had a pressure cooker bomb and five pipe bombs following the marathon bombings, so spontaneously decided to travel to New York to launch an attack there.

They hijacked a car and its driver in Boston during the evening of 18 April, but their plan fell apart when they had to stop for petrol and the driver managed to escape and alert the police.

Police intercepted the brothers in the stolen car, prompting a gun battle that left 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev dead.

The Tsarnaev family has origins in the predominantly Muslim republic of Chechnya in southern Russia, but the brothers had been living in the US for nearly a decade.

The pair are thought to have planned the attack themselves, without help from foreign militants, and are suspected of becoming radicalised online.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has said he and his brother were angry about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The FBI has come under scrutiny following revelations that it interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev at the request of Russia amid concern he had become a follower of radical Islam, but investigators found nothing and closed the case.

Related posts

International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Hamas officials

Trump has called for dismantling the Education Department. Here’s what that would mean

Trump’s criminal conviction won’t stop him from getting security clearance as president