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  1. #51

    Boston bombing suspects planned Times Square attack, Bloomberg says

    By Greg Botelho and Josh Levs, CNN
    updated 10:54 PM EDT, Thu April 25, 2013



    Days after allegedly causing death and devastation at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, two brothers "spontaneously" decided to head to a new place to unleash terror -- New York City -- that city's mayor said.

    Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the Boston bombings, told investigators that he and his brother decided to bomb Times Square as they talked the night of April 18 in a Mercedes SUV they'd just carjacked, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

    The 19-year-old initially told investigators from a Boston hospital bed that he and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, had talked about going to New York to "party." Then he offered a new account during a second round of questioning Sunday evening into Monday, during which Kelly said Dzhokhar was "a lot more lucid" than the first time he was interviewed.

    The brothers had five pipe bombs and a "pressure-cooker bomb" -- the latter similar to the bombs used in the Boston blasts -- with them in the SUV that they could have used in New York, Kelly said.

    Instead, their plan "fell apart" when the SUV ran low on fuel in the Boston area and the Tsarnaevs ordered the driver to pull into a gas station, Kelly said. The driver escaped during the refueling, he said, and police subsequently caught up with the Tsarnaevs -- first in a shootout after which 26-year-old Tamerlan died, then by capturing Dzhokhar on Friday.

    "We don't know that we would have been able to stop the terrorists had they arrived here from Boston," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "We're just thankful that we didn't have to find out that answer."

    Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said investigators believe the Boston bombing suspects were planning another attack "likely in the Boston area."

    Latest developments in the Boston bombings probe

    This image from VK.com shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in New York's Times Square.


    Suspect 1 was boxer, photo essay subject


    Photos: Boston bombing suspects

    There is no evidence that New York City is currently a target of a terror attack stemming from the Boston bombings, Kelly added. Still, he said authorities are investigating two visits that the surviving suspect made to New York City last year.

    In one of those trips, in April 2012, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is photographed in Times Square.

    Official: U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq motivated bombings

    One person pictured in that picture was in federal custody Thursday, as he's been for the last six days, on alleged visa violations. This man, whom a federal law enforcement source said Dzhokhar shared a cell phone with, was originally detained last Friday with another person when federal agents swarmed a residence thinking Dzhokhar might be inside, a federal law enforcement source said.

    Neither of these two detained men -- both foreign exchange students from Kazakhstan at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, where Dzhokhar also was enrolled -- has been linked to the Boston Marathon attack. Yet investigators hope they can better piece together the suspected bombers' movements before and after the marathon.

    "These guys are not being cut loose immediately, and there's a reason why," the federal law enforcement source said.

    Sources: Russia raised concerns about mother, son

    While investigators continue to look into the Boston bombings, the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus police officer and a violent chase and shootout in Watertown, Massachusetts -- all of which authorities have blamed on the Tsarnaev brothers -- the probe has also been focused some 5,500 miles away in the semi-autonomous Russian republic of Dagestan.

    That's where the suspects' parents live and spoke to reporters Thursday.

    The CIA, FBI and bombing suspect #1 Their mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaev, told CNN's Nick Paton Walsh that she didn't want to accept the reality of the bombing, saying it was fake. She has seen a video pushing the wild idea, she said, adding that there was no blood -- and that paint was used instead.

    Photos: Galleries from the attack and aftermath

    Bomb victim: Amputation was best option "That's what I want to know, because everybody's talking about it -- that this is a show, that's what I want to know. That's what I want to understand," she said.

    But her disbelief broke down when she spoke of the victims.

    "I really feel sorry for all of them. Really feel sorry for all of them," she said, her voice cracking even as she remained resolute that her sons were not involved.

    While her husband Anzor Tsarnaev has said he plans to fly to the United States -- though those plans may be in limbo after Zubeidat said she called for an ambulance for him on Thursday in Makhachkala -- his wife isn't planning to join him.

    She's wanted on 2012 felony charges of shoplifting and property damage in Massachusetts, according to court officials.

    The family lived there before she jumped bail; the parents moved the same year to Dagestan.

    Dead Boston bomb suspect posted video of jihadist, analysis shows

    A year before, Zubeidat and her son Tamerlan were both added by U.S. authorities to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, database -- a collection of more than a half million names maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center, an intelligence official said.

    That came as Russia raised concerns to U.S. authorities about her and her son, sources told CNN.

    Zubeidat Tsarnaev said the FBI had visited her family "several times" in 2011 with questions about Tamerlan's "Islamic interests."

    A senior U.S. official with direct knowledge of information from the Russians said that the case then "was extremely thin," adding that Russia wanted Tamerlan Tsarnaev questioned to see if he and others had become "radicalized." U.S. authorities closed the case a few months after opening it.

    Suspects' mother describes her last conversation with her sons

    Suspect's widow is assisting investigation, lawyer says

    Putin: 'We were right'

    Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday urged closer cooperation between other countries' security services in the wake of the Boston attack

    "If we combine our efforts, we will not suffer blows like that," he said during a live televised call-in session in Moscow on Thursday.

    The Tsarnaevs are originally from the embattled Russian republic of Chechnya but fled from the brutal wars there in the 1990s. The two brothers were born in Kyrgyzstan and moved at different times to the United States.

    In his first on-camera comments since the bombing, Putin also lashed out against those in the West who have slammed Russia for human rights abuses in its actions toward Chechnya.

    The truth about the Chechen threat

    "Russia is among the first victims, and I hate it when our Western partners call our terrorists -- who committed some heinous crimes in Russia -- when they call them freedom fighters and never call them terrorists. They supported them," said Putin, accusing unnamed people or groups of providing Russia's foes with political, financial and "media" support.

    And U.S. authorities have come under fire at home, with lawmakers asking if the FBI and CIA failed to share information. Sources told CNN that Russia had separately asked the FBI and the CIA to look into Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011.

    Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said Thursday he believes "ultimate blame" for the attacks goes to the Obama administration.

    "The FBI and the CIA are, they have great people but, you know, we're going backwards in national security. Benghazi and Boston to me are examples of us going backward," he said.

    But a ranking Democrat on a House intelligence subcommittee said Thursday he does not see an intelligence-sharing failure.

    "This information was put in a database, it was shared among different agencies, it was shared with a joint terrorism task force, and that's exactly what should happen," U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, told CNN, referring to the TIDE database.

    Sources: Suspect was unarmed in boat

    More details, meanwhile, continue to emerge about the April 15 bombings as well as authorities' engagement days later with the two suspects.

    A law enforcement official told CNN Thursday that at least one of the two bombs -- the second to explode -- was detonated by remote control. Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Maryland Democrat and member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said that the brothers used a remote control device similar to those used to guide toy cars.

    While video taken near the scene of the explosions shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev talking on a cell phone, it is not known whether he used it to trigger a device, a law enforcement official said.

    Those twin blasts killed three people and injured more than 260 others, 14 of whom had limbs amputated. As of Thursday evening, 34 of those wounded were still being treated at Boston hospitals, including one patient in critical condition.

    The manhunt for those responsible ended last Friday, when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured after a tense standoff after he'd hidden in a boat in the yard of a home in the Boston suburb of Watertown, Massachusetts.

    The teenager was unarmed when he was wounded in a barrage of gunfire, and there was no firearm found in the boat, said several sources from difference agencies familiar with the investigation.

    Authorities previously said in a criminal complaint that there was a standoff involving gunfire before Dzhokhar's capture. Watertown Police Chief Edward Deveau told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Saturday that it was his understanding that the suspect fired from the boat.

    This came after Tsarnaev and his older brother allegedly shot and killed Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus police officer Sean Collier in Cambridge.

    The Middlesex County District Attorney's Office hopes to bring charges against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for his alleged role in incidents last week in Cambridge and Watertown, spokeswoman Stephanie Guyotte said Thursday.
    CNN's Drew Griffin, Dave Alsup, Carol Cratty, Nick Paton Walsh, Brian Todd, Barbara Starr, Susan Candiotti and Ben Brumfield contributed to this report.

  2. #52

    Boston bombings: Is Misha a red herring?

    By Peter Weber | The Week



    The New York Review of Books says it has found the mysterious Misha. Mikhail Allakhverdov says he's no Svengali

    When Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev's family members started mentioning a mysterious man named Misha, and suggested he was a driving force behind Tamerlan's descent into radical, violent Islam, it didn't seem like it should be too hard to find the man: How many balding, red-bearded Armenian Muslim converts live in the Boston area?

    Then days passed, with no news but lots of speculation. Many Armenians protested that no such figure could exist, since the stalwartly Christian nation's bloody history with its Muslim neighbors would prevent any Armenian from converting to Islam. In The Week, Walter Katz suggested that Misha may be an FBI informant who started grooming Tamerlan for a federal sting operation before giving up (prematurely).

    SEE MORE: The Tsarnaev brothers' Chechnya connection

    On Saturday, anonymous law enforcement sources released a dribble of news: The FBI had identified Misha, they told The Associated Press, but found he had no ties to terrorism generally or the Boston bombings specifically. On Sunday evening, Christian Caryl at the New York Review of Books introduced the world to the man he says is Misha:


    Today I was able to meet "Misha," whose real name is Mikhail Allakhverdov. Having been referred by a family in Boston that was close to the Tsarnaevs, I found Allakverdov at his home in Rhode Island, in a lower middle class neighborhood, where he lives in a modest, tidy apartment with his elderly parents. He confirmed he was a convert to Islam and that he had known Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but he flatly denied any part in the bombings. "I wasn't his teacher. If I had been his teacher, I would have made sure he never did anything like this," Allakhverdov said.

    A 39-year-old man of Armenian-Ukrainian descent, Allakhverdov is of medium height and has a thin, reddish-blond beard.... Allakhverdov said he had known Tamerlan in Boston, where he lived until about three years ago, and has not had any contact with him since. He declined to describe the nature of his acquaintance with Tamerlan or the Tsarnaev family, but said he had never met the family members who are now accusing him of radicalizing Tamerlan. He also confirmed he had been interviewed by the FBI and that he has cooperated with the investigation. [New York Review]

    That seems pretty cut and dry — Allakhverdov wouldn't be the first person wrongly accused of involvement in this case. But also on Sunday, the AP's David Caruso, Michael Kunzelman, and Max Seddon published their report on the recent radicalization of another character in this drama: The suspected bombers' mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva. And Tsarnaeva says she became religious thanks to the influence of, yes, Misha:

    In photos of her as a younger woman, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva wears a low-cut blouse and has her hair teased like a 1980s rock star. After she arrived in the U.S. from Russia in 2002, she went to beauty school and did facials at a suburban day spa. But in recent years, people noticed a change. She began wearing a hijab and cited conspiracy theories about 9/11 being a plot against Muslims....

    Zubeidat said she and Tamerlan began to turn more deeply into their Muslim faith about five years ago after being influenced by a family friend, named "Misha." The man, whose full name she didn't reveal, impressed her with a religious devotion that was far greater than her own, even though he was an ethnic Armenian who converted to Islam. "I wasn't praying until he prayed in our house, so I just got really ashamed that I am not praying, being a Muslim, being born Muslim. I am not praying. Misha, who converted, was praying," she said. [AP]

    Both these accounts can't be true. Caryl, for example, talks to a "close friend of the family in Boston" who says that "Misha was not known to have visited Tamerlan at home" — a point contradicted now by Tamerlan's mom, uncle, and former brother-in-law. Maybe it was always inevitable that the media would find Misha, and it's probably good for Allakverdov that a Russian-speaking journalist was the first to break the story. But now that his name and state of residence are out there, it's safe to say this isn't the last we've heard about Misha.

  3. #53

    3 more detained in Boston attack



    (CNN) -- Two classmates of Boston Marathon bomb suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and a third person face federal charges in connection with the April 15 attack, federal law enforcement sources said Wednesday.

    Boston police announced the arrests Wednesday morning, adding that there was "no threat to the public." They were expected to appear before a federal judge Wednesday afternoon, U.S. government sources said.

    The classmates -- Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev -- are both from Kazakhstan and had been in federal custody on immigration charges already, their lawyers told CNN. The third person arrested is a U.S. citizen.

    The Kazakh students face charges of making false statements to investigators and conspiracy to obstruct justice, according to a federal law enforcement source with firsthand knowledge of the investigation.

    All three are accused of removing items from Tsarnaev's dorm room at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth after the bombings, a law enforcement official who has been briefed about the arrests said.

    Law enforcement officials believe they helped destroy evidence that might further implicate Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the bombing by disposing of fireworks and his laptop, a U.S. government official said.

    Two U.S. government officials said the charges involve illegal actions after the bombing. One official said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev contacted the three after FBI agents released photographs of Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan and asked them to dispose of the items. The suspects said they did not know the significance of what they were doing, the official told CNN.

    Another federal law enforcement official said two of three lied to the FBI when asked about whether they had seen the suspects or knew of their whereabouts after the bombings.

    That official said the suspects threw out backpacks of fireworks from the dorm room, leading to a two-day search of a New Bedford landfill last week.

    Alan Dershowitz, a prominent defense attorney and Harvard law professor, said called the obstruction charge "weak," suggesting it was meant to pressure the suspects into providing more information on Tsarnaev.

    "If that's the best the feds have now, then they're just squeezing," Dershowitz told CNN. "It doesn't sound like they have very much new here."

    Two bombs exploded in the crowd gathered near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and wounding more than 260. Federal agents blame the Tsarnaev brothers of carrying out the attack.

    Carjacking victim recalls experience

    Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after a shootout with police on April 19, while Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was wounded but survived.

    Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev appear in a photograph with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev taken in New York's Times Square during an earlier visit. They were taken into custody last month on charges that they had violated the terms of their student visas and had already been questioned by investigators on April 19, hours before Tsarnaev's arrest, Kadyrbayev attorney Robert Stahl told CNN.

    Federal law enforcement sources said at the time that the Kazakh students were being detained "in an abundance of caution" because authorities wanted detailed information on the Tsarnaevs' movements in the weeks and days before the attack.

    Early discussion of avoiding the death penalty
    CNN's Susan Candiotti, Carol Cratty, Jake Tapper, Brian Todd, Pamela Brown and Kathleen Johnston contributed to this report.

  4. #54

    Re: Terror @ The Boston Marathon...


    ...

  5. #55

    Re: 3 more detained in Boston attack


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  6. #56

    Re: 3 more detained in Boston attack


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  7. #57

    Nghi can nổ bom Boston tiết lộ kế hoạch tấn công vào ngày lễ Độc Lập

    VOA Tiếng Việt
    Thứ sáu, 03/05/2013



    Các giới chức thi hành công lực tại Boston cho biết nghi can đánh bom cuộc chạy đua marathon ở Boston, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, đã nói với Cơ quan Điều tra Liên Bang Hoa Kỳ, FBI, rằng y và người anh, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, thoạt tiên dự định thực hiện các vụ đánh bom tự sát, và đã lập kế hoạch để thực hiện các vụ tấn công ấy vào ngày Lễ Độc Lập 4 tháng Bảy tại Hoa Kỳ.

    Các giới chức cho hay Dzhokhar nói với họ rằng hai anh em đã đổi kế hoạch, dời ngày tấn công lên sớm hơn vì đã hoàn tất bom tự chế sớm hơn dự liệu.

    Ngày 15 tháng Tư la Ngày Aí Quốc, và Ngày Lễ Độc Lập 4 tháng Bảy, đều là những ngày vinh danh lòng yêu nước tại thành phố Boston.

    Tờ The New York Times loan tin nghi can Dzhokhar còn nói với nhà chức trách rằng y và người anh đã xem nhiều băng video quay những bài thuyết giảng của Anwar al-Awlaki, một giáo sĩ cực đoan người Mỹ đã bị máy bay không người lái Mỹ giết chết trong một cuộc tấn công hồi tháng 9 năm 2011.

    Hiện chưa có dấu hiệu nào cho thấy hai anh em Tsarnaev đã từng liên lạc trực tiếp với Awlaki.

    Hôm qua, các giới chức Boston cho hay một nhà quàn đã thay mặt gia đình Tsarnaev đến nhận xác của Tamerlan. Hiện không rõ chi tiết về nguyên nhân đích xác gây tử vong và xác chết của đương sự được đưa đi đâu.

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