Breaking: Explosion Reported at Boston Marathon's Finish Line

[Jan Klimkowski]

Boat where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hid 'looked like Swiss cheese' after shootout

Tsarnaev was found when Watertown man looked underneath tarpaulin and found the Boston bombing suspect inside

Adam Gabbatt in Watertown
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 20 April 2013 19.24 BST

The boat was riddled with bullet holes. Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

The boat that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found hiding in looked like "Swiss cheese" after the Boston bombing suspect's shootout with police, the boat's owner told neighbours.

Tsarnaev was taken into custody after a Watertown resident, named locally as David Henneberry, went to check on his boat and found Tsarnaev inside. Swat teams moved in and a gun fight ensued, resulting in Tsarnaev being captured. He is in hospital in a serious condition.

On Saturday, Henneberry was being hailed as the man who helped end a tense 22-hour manhunt, which, until his phone call to police, had been fruitless.

But it came at a cost. The boat a source of immense pride for the owner, according to local residents was no longer seaworthy, being, as it was, riddled with bullet holes.

"He said the boat was like Swiss cheese," said one neighbour, who did not want to give her name but lived a few doors down from the boat owner.

The resident said she had spoken to Henneberry on Friday night, after police had taken away the suspect.

"He was shellshocked," she said. She said Henneberry had lifted the cover on his boat and seen Tsarnaev inside before calling authorities.

"He saw that the tarp was open, and that seemed wrong to him, because we've had a pretty harsh winter and the boat had never been undone. He checks on his boat a lot that's his baby, so that's how he noticed it," she said.

Access was restricted to Franklin Street on Saturday, with police tape blocking off the section of the neighbourhood where Friday's drama played out.

Residents were milling around, intrigued by the small number of television crews who remained on scene.

Images from news teams depicted Tsarnaev sitting up on the side of the boat.

Other pictures showed him receiving medical attention at the scene and with a mask over his mouth in an ambulance.

Rebecca Heavey, 29, lives in the house behind where Tsarnaev was found. Her backyard is adjacent to where the boat was stored. She described the drama as authorities swarmed over her garden to get to Tsarnaev.

"I just saw all the Swat teams in our backyard with their guns drawn," she said. "We were crawling on our elbows through the house, trying to find a safe place. Our doorbell was ringing and we didn't know who it was, we couldn't see the police. We were terrified."

Swat teams used her car for cover, Heavey said, and propped up their guns on the roof.

Heavey said she had ventured out briefly into her backyard on Friday afternoon, breaching the lockdown order to take her dog out for a walk.

"The kid could probably hear us in our backyard from where he was," she said.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was contained in a boat. Surely it was absolutely crucial to take him alive.

Instead, the boat gets riddled with bullets.

It reminds me of the arson on the false flag Symbionese Liberation Army when they were contained in LA in 1974.

Donald "Cinque" DeFreeze could not be allowed to live and tell his tale.

Looks like Dzhokhar wasn't meant to tell his tale either.

Boston Marathon suspect may never be able to be questioned, mayor says

Surviving suspect's injuries prevent him from communicating as FBI faces scrutiny over contact with Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011


Karen McVeigh and Matt Williams in New York, Adam Gabbatt in Boston and Miriam Elder in Makhachkala, Dagestan
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 21 April 2013 19.22 BST
Jump to comments (61)

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
The medical condition of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev meant it was unlikely that the FBI would get any early leads from him, officials said. Photograph: Corbis

The surviving Boston bombings suspect is so seriously injured that investigators may struggle to interrogate him effectively, it was suggested on Sunday, as further questions were raised about the FBI's previous contacts with his dead brother.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old who is accused of planting the pressure-cooker bombs with his older brother Tamerlan that killed three and injured more than 180 at the Boston marathon last Monday, was being treated in hospital for a reported bullet wound to the throat and was unable to speak. He was captured on Friday night, a day after a violent gun battle with police that left his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, dead.

Boston mayor Tom Menino told This Week on ABC that he was so seriously ill that agents might never be able to interrogate him. "We don't know if we'll ever be able to question the individual," he said.

Dan Coats, a Republican member of the Senate intelligence committee, told ABC: "The information that we have is that there was a shot to the throat. It doesn't mean he can't communicate, but right now I think he's in a condition where we can't get any information from him at all."

[Albert Doyle]

The 'spontaneous' celebration reminds me of the stages pulling down of the statue of Hussein in Bagdad and putting the American flag on it. We now know that was pre-planned and staged and the spontaneous crowd shipped in and told what to do - exactly.

CNN will show crowds celebrating with an American flag. It's kind of sad seeing how those people don't realize they are actually celebrating their acquiescing to a massively powerful, ever-increasing military government. What they won't show is how powerless the people actually are against that government when it comes to what that flag represents the most.

[Peter Lemkin]

Tamerlan's American wife Katherine Russell, 24, with whom he had a three-year-old daughter Zahara, is said to have converted to Islam when she married him, and taken to wearing the veil. She was taken in for questioning by FBI agents on Friday.

Where did "Katherine Russell" suddenly appear from?

Dzhokhar is said to have run over his brother as he made his getaway in a stolen SUV while Tamerlan lay handcuffed on the ground with fatal gunshot wounds late on Thursday.

So Tamerlan was handcuffed with fatal gunshot wounds when Dzhokhar ran him over?

I note another change in the script. The explosive devices are now labeled as extremely sophisticated [see article I posted just above]!....not amateur devices. Since when do pros use pressure cookers that only made the relatively small explosions we all saw? Jan, did you take a look at the autopsy photo. I'd love an explanation of the huge clean gash in his left side - right through his ribs and into the lungs. His body showed no evidence of a car driving over it...only the gash and many bullet holes. They are making this up as they go along..... They were going to do a controlled explosion at their flat [due to being booby trapped...but it contained nothing but sports clothes, apparently. No bomb making materials - nada, but a small plastic can with gasoline in it. While they didn't have a car, they could have gas for cleaning or lawn mowing. It was small and the ONLY dangerous thing found that anyone is mentioning.

[Peter Lemkin]

Glenn Greenwald
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 20 April 2013 14.24 BST

This still frame from video shows Boston marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev visible through an ambulance after he was captured in Watertown, Massachusetts.
This still frame from video shows Boston marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev visible through an ambulance after he was captured in Watertown, Massachusetts. Photograph: Robert Ray/AP

(updated below [Sun.])

Shortly before Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, an American citizen, was apprehended last night, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham advocated on Twitter that the Boston Marathon bombing suspect be denied what most Americans think of as basic rights. "If captured," Graham wrote, I hope [the] Administration will at least consider holding the Boston suspect as [an] enemy combatant for intelligence gathering purposes." Arguing that "if the Boston suspect has ties to overseas terror organizations he could be treasure trove of information", Graham concluded: "The last thing we may want to do is read Boston suspect Miranda Rights telling him to 'remain silent.'"

Once Tsarnaev was arrested, President Obama strongly suggested that he would eventually be tried in court, which presumably means he will at some point have a lawyer (something that Graham, along with John McCain and Liz Cheney, last night opposed). But the Obama DOJ also announced that they intended to question him "extensively" - their word - before reading him his Miranda rights, as Graham advocated in the second and third tweets quoted above. And the DOJ said they intend to question him not just about matters relating to immediate threats to the public safety - are there other bombs set to go off? is there an accomplice on the loose preparing to kill? - but also, again in their words, "to gain critical intelligence".

Graham's tweets quickly created a firestorm of outrage among various Democrats, progressives, liberals and the like. They insisted that such actions would be radical and menacing, a serious threat to core Constitutional protections. I certainly shared those sentiments: the general concept that long-standing rights should be eroded in the name of Terrorism is indeed odious, and the specific attempt to abridge core constitutional liberties on US soil under that banner is self-evidently dangerous.

But while I shared the reaction of these Democrats to Graham's decrees, it nonetheless really baffled me, as I quickly noted. This was true for several reasons.

First, the Obama administration has already rolled back Miranda rights for terrorism suspects captured on US soil. It did so two years ago with almost no controversy or even notice, including from many of those who so vocally condemned Graham's Miranda tweets yesterday. In May, 2010, the New York Times' Charlie Savage - under the headline "Holder Backs a Miranda Limit for Terror Suspects" - reported that "the Obama administration said Sunday it would seek a law allowing investigators to interrogate terrorism suspects without informing them of their rights." Instead of going to Congress, the Obama DOJ, in March 2011, simply adopted their own rules that vested themselves with this power, as reported back then by Salon's Justin Elliott ("Obama rolls back Miranda rights"), the Wall Street Journal ("Rights Are Curtailed for Terror Suspects"), the New York Times ("Delayed Miranda Warning Ordered for Terror Suspects"), and myself ("Miranda is Obama's latest victim").

In a great analysis last night denouncing the DOJ's decision to delay reading Tsarnaev his rights, Slate's Emily Bazelon details exactly what roll-back of Miranda was achieved by Obama. Specifically, the Obama DOJ exploited and radically expanded the very narrow "public safety" exception to Miranda, which was first created in 1984 by the more conservative Supreme Court justices in New York v. Quarles, over the vehement dissent of its liberal members (Brennan, Marshall and Stevens, along with O'Connor). The Quarles court held that where police officers took a very brief period to ask focused questions necessary to stop an imminent threat to public safety without first Mirandizing the suspect, the answers under those circumstances would be admissible (in Quarles, the police apprehended a rape suspect and simply asked where his gun was before reading him his rights, and the court held that the defendant's pre-Miranda answer - "over there" - was admissible).

The Court's liberals, led by Justice Thurgood Marshall, warned that this exception would dilute Miranda and ensure abuse. This exception, wrote Marshall, "condemns the American judiciary to a new era of post hoc inquiry into the propriety of custodial interrogations" and "endorse[s] the introduction of coerced self-incriminating statements in criminal prosecutions". Moreover, he wrote, the "public-safety exception destroys forever the clarity of Miranda for both law enforcement officers and members of the judiciary" and said the court's decision "cannot mask what a serious loss the administration of justice has incurred".

As Marshall noted, the police have always had the power to question a suspect about imminent threats without Mirandizing him; indeed, they are free to question suspects about anything without first reading them their Miranda rights. But pre-Miranda statements were not admissible, could not be used to prosecute the person. This new 1984 "public safety" exception to that long-standing rule, Marshall said, guts the Fifth Amendment's guarantee that one will not be compelled to incriminate oneself. As he put it: "were constitutional adjudication always conducted in such an ad hoc manner, the Bill of Rights would be a most unreliable protector of individual liberties."

As controversial as this exception was from the start (and as hated as it was among traditional, actual liberals), it was at least narrowly confined. But the Obama DOJ in 2011 wildly expanded this exception for terrorism suspects. The Obama DOJ's Memorandum (issued in secret, of course, but then leaked) cited what it called "the magnitude and complexity of the threat often posed by terrorist organizations" in order to claim "a significantly more extensive public safety interrogation without Miranda warnings than would be permissible in an ordinary criminal case". It expressly went beyond the "public safety" exception established by the Supreme Court to arrogate unto itself the power to question suspects about other matters without reading them their rights (emphasis added):

"There may be exceptional cases in which, although all relevant public safety questions have been asked, agents nonetheless conclude that continued unwarned interrogation is necessary to collect valuable and timely intelligence not related to any immediate threat, and that the government's interest in obtaining this intelligence outweighs the disadvantages of proceeding with unwarned interrogation."

That is what Graham advocated regarding Miranda: that Tsarnaev be interrogated about intelligence matters without Mirandizing him, and that's exactly what Obama DOJ policy - two years ago - already approved. Worse, as Bazelon noted: "Who gets to make this determination? The FBI, in consultation with DoJ, if possible. In other words, the police and the prosecutors, with no one to check their power." At the time, the ACLU made clear how menacing was the Obama DOJ's attempted roll-back of Miranda rights for terror suspects.

Although we do not yet know how long the Boston bombing suspect will be questioned pre-Miranda or what will be asked, Bazelon - citing the Obama DOJ's 2011 policy as well as last night's announcement - writes:

"And so the FBI will surely ask 19-year-old Tsarnaev anything it sees fit. Not just what law enforcement needs to know to prevent a terrorist threat and keep the public safe but anything else it deemed related to 'valuable and timely intelligence'. Couldn't that be just about anything about Tsarnaev's life, or his family, given that his alleged accomplice was his older brother (killed in a shootout with police)? There won't be a public uproar. Whatever the FBI learns will be secret: We won't know how far the interrogation went. And besides, no one is crying over the rights of the young man who is accused of killing innocent people. . . ."

So Democrats reacted with horror and outrage to Graham's suggestion that "the last thing we may want to do is read Boston suspect Miranda Rights telling him to 'remain silent.'" But that's already Obama DOJ policy, enacted with little controversy. And last night's announcement makes clear that the Obama DOJ intends, as Bazelon says, to question him about a wide range of topics far beyond matters of imminent threats to public safety without first Mirandizing him.

But there's another reason why I found Democratic outrage over Graham's statements to be confounding. The theory on which Graham's arguments are based is one that the Obama administration has vigorously embraced with the full-throated endorsement of most of its supporters: namely, that the US is "at war", and that anyone who takes up arms against the country or tries to kill Americans is not entitled to basic rights - even if they're American citizens. As Graham told the Washington Post, his view that Tsarnaev is not entitled to these rights is grounded in his belief that the US is fighting a global war and those who fight in it against the US are "enemy combatants".

It is bizarre indeed to watch Democrats act as though Graham's theories are exotic or repellent. This is, after all, the same faction that insists that Obama has the power to target even US citizens for execution without charges, lawyers, or any due process, on the ground that anyone the president accuses of Terrorism forfeits those rights. The only way one can believe this is by embracing the same theory that Lindsey Graham is espousing: namely, that accused Terrorists are enemy combatants, not criminals, and thus entitled to no due process and other guarantees in the Bill of Rights. Once you adopt this "entire-globe-is-a-battlefield" war paradigm - as supporters of Obama's assassination powers must do and have explicitly done - then it's impossible to scorn Graham's views about what should be done with Tsarnaev. Indeed, one is necessarily endorsing the theory in which Graham's beliefs are grounded.

It's certainly possible to object to Graham's arguments on pragmatic grounds, by advocating that Tsarnaev should be eventually Mirandized and tried in a federal court because it will be more beneficial to the government if that is done. But for anyone who supports the general Obama "war on terror" approach or specifically his claimed power to target even US citizens for execution without charges, it's impossible to object to Graham's arguments on principled or theoretical grounds. Once you endorse the "whole-globe-is-a-battlefield" theory, then there's no principled way to exclude US soil. If (as supporters of Obama's terrorism policies must argue), the "battlefield" is anywhere an accused terrorist is found and they can be detained or killed without charges, then that necessarily includes terrorists on US soil (or, as Graham put it, using one of the creepiest slogans imaginable: "the homeland is the battlefield").

Recall, in fact, that the Democratic-led Senate enacted the 2011 NDAA, which was then signed into law by President Obama, that codified the power of indefinite detention even of US citizens on US soil accused of terrorism (that's what led a federal court to enjoin the law on the grounds of unconstitutionality). It is true that Obama said that, as a matter of policy, he would not exercise these powers against US citizens on US soil, but that's simply a pragmatic choice that can be changed at any time. The theory of the NDAA is the same theory as Graham yesterday invoked, which in turn is the same theory animating the Obama "war on terror": the US is "at war" with The Terrorists, and anyone who takes up arms against the US and tries to kill Americans are "combatants" who can be denied basic rights. Watching Democrats mock Graham, while supporting Obama's policies based on the same theory, is truly surreal.

Finally, consider how radically Obama's "war on terror" has altered political opinion. As noted, even the narrow "public safety" exception to Miranda was the work of mostly right-wing Supreme Court justices who long hated Miranda. For that reason, it was loathed by liberals, including Thurgood Marshall, who viewed it as a stealth attempt to destroy Miranda. Yet now, the Obama administration has radically expanded even that once-controversial exception by claiming the power to question suspects without Miranda warnings far beyond what even those conservative justices recognized (as the Obama DOJ put it: "There may be exceptional cases in which, although all relevant public safety questions have been asked, agents nonetheless conclude that continued unwarned interrogation is necessary").

Now, the cheers for this erosion of Miranda are led not by right-wing Supreme Court justices such as William Rehnquist (who wrote the opinion in Quarles), but by MSNBC pundits like former Obama campaign media aide Joy Reid, who - immediately upon the DOJ's announcement - instantly became a newly minted Miranda expert in order to loudly defend the DOJ's actions. MSNBC's featured "terrorism expert" Roger Cressey - who, unbeknownst to MSNBC viewers, is actually an executive with the intelligence contractor Booz Allen - also praised the DOJ's decision not to Mirandize the accused bomber (if you want instant, reflexive support for the US government's police and military powers, MSNBC is the place to turn these days).

Leave aside how misleading and misinformed this defense is: the DOJ's policy, as documented, is to go well beyond that 1984 "public safety" exception and the DOJ clearly intends to do so here. It's just so telling how this doctrine, in the age of Obama, has been transformed from hated right-wing assault on Miranda rights to something liberals now celebrate and defend even in its warped and expanded version as embraced by the Obama DOJ. Just 30 years ago, Quarles was viewed as William Rehnquist's pernicious first blow against Miranda; now, it's heralded by MSNBC Democrats as good, just and necessary for our safety, even in its new extremist rendition. That's the process by which long-standing liberal views of basic civil liberties, as well core Constitutional guarantees, continue to be diluted under President Obama in the name of terrorism. Just compare the scathing denunciation of this Miranda exception by Marshall, Brennan and Stevens to the MSNBC cheers for it in its enlarged form.

Needless to say, Tsarnaev is probably the single most hated figure in America now. As a result, as Bazelon noted, not many people will care what is done to him, just like few people care what happens to the accused terrorists at Guantanamo, or Bagram, or in Yemen and Pakistan. But that's always how rights are abridged: by targeting the most marginalized group or most hated individual in the first instance, based on the expectation that nobody will object because of how marginalized or hated they are. Once those rights violations are acquiesced to in the first instance, then they become institutionalized forever, and there is no basis for objecting once they are applied to others, as they inevitably will be (in the case of the War on Terror powers: as they already are being applied to others). As Bazelon concludes:

"No one is crying over the rights of the young man who is accused of killing innocent people, helping his brother set off bombs that were loaded to maim, and terrorizing Boston Thursday night and Friday. But the next time you read about an abusive interrogation, or a wrongful conviction that resulted from a false confession, think about why we have Miranda in the first place. It's to stop law enforcement authorities from committing abuses. Because when they can make their own rules, sometime, somewhere, they inevitably will."

Leave aside the fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been convicted of nothing and is thus entitled to a presumption of innocence. The reason to care what happens to him is because how he is treated creates precedent for what the US government is empowered to do, including to US citizens on US soil. When you cheer for the erosion of his rights, you're cheering for the erosion of your own.
The Jose Padilla precedent

It is true, as noted, that Obama's statement that Tsarnaev will eventually be tried in a court constitutes a rejection of the Graham/McCain/Cheney argument that he be held as an "enemy combatant" more or less indefinitely. It's strange to give credit to a political leader for being willing to charge someone with a crime and allow them a lawyer before imprisoning them, but in our political climate, that's how low the bar is set, because that outcome is far from certain. So those who say that Obama is not replicating Graham's entire advocated course of action are, at least to that extent, correct, provided that Tsarnaev is eventually charged and ends up in a civilian court.

But given how Graham's statements were treated like some sort of shocking aberration, it is worth noting that the US government previously did exactly what he advocated. In 2002, US citizen Jose Padilla was arrested on terrorism charges on US soil (at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport), and shortly before he was to be tried, the Bush administration declared him to be an "enemy combatant", transferred him to a military brig, and then imprisoned him (and tortured him) for the next 3 1/2 years without charges, a lawyer, or any contact with the outside world. That was the incident that most propelled me to start political writing, but it barely registered as a political controversy.

So as extremist as Graham's tweets may have seemed to some, it was already done in the US with little backlash. That demonstrates how easily and insidiously extremist rights assaults become normalized if they are not vehemently resisted in the first instance, regardless of one's views of the individual target.
CAIR speech

For those in New York: I'll be giving the keynote speech this evening to the now-incredibly well-timed annual event of CAIR in New York, entitled "Upholding our Constitution", beginning at 6:00 pm. I believe (though I'm not certain) that there are a couple of tickets still available; information is here.
UPDATE [Sun.]

That the Boston Marathon bombing was "an act of terrorism" is now unchallengeable conventional wisdom. Without my adopting it all: Ali Abunimah has an excellent analysis examining whether the evidence exists to make this claim and what is revealed by the embrace of this conclusion.

Similarly, Alan Dershowitz was on BBC radio yesterday and, citing the lack of clarity about motive, said (at the 3:15 mark): "It's not even clear under the federal terrorist statutes that it qualifies as an act of terrorism."

[Anthony Thorne]

MILITARY MEN WITNESSED AT BOSTON BOMBING IDENTIFIED AS NATIONAL GUARD CST TEAM

http://www.prisonplanet.com/military-men...teams.html

[Jeffrey Orling]

I want to see/read a confirmed casuality report...

From the images I saw there wasn't more than 15 people hurt... and or killed.

[Anthony Thorne]

From Xymphora:

http://xymphora.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/...iness.html

THE FAMILY BUSINESS?

"Brothers in Marathon bombings took two paths into infamy":

"The Tsarnaev brothers were ethnic Chechens, born in the former Soviet Republic now called Kyrgyzstan. Whether they ever lived in war-torn Chechnya is unclear. Their father, Anzor Tsarnaev, was described by family Friday as a former Russian amateur boxing champion. While the family was living in Kyrgyzstan, Anzor Tsarnayev said in an interview Friday by the Russian agency lifenews.ru, they had trouble with government authorities.

"In Kyrgyzstan we were oppressed," the father said. "We wanted a quiet life. I was afraid for my kids and tried to save them."

By 2001, the family had taken refuge in Makhachkala, the capital of the predominantly Muslim Russian region of Dagestan, which borders Chechnya. There, the brothers briefly attended grade school. Anzor's sister Maret Tsarnaeva told reporters that she wrote the refugee petition in April 2002 for the father, mother and youngest son, Dzhokhar, to receive asylum in the United States. The three other children, Tamerlan and his sisters, Alina and Bella, joined the family later."

Ethnic Chechens, started somehow in Kyrgyzstan, where they were 'oppressed'. Moved to Dagestan. From there, sought and received asylum in the U. S. Family breaks up, father returns to Dagestan, sons seem to have lots of money and no obvious means of support (my emphasis in red):

"Family members said that the Tsarnaevs did not spend any time in Chechnya after the region declared itself independent in 1991. But Tamerlan evidently wanted people to think he had a connection: He told a newspaper in 2004 that he had been born in Grozny. In 2011, Dzhokhar contacted a history professor at UMass Dartmouth who teaches a history course on Chechnya to learn more about Chechen history.

. . .

In the past 10 years, Moscow has consolidated its control over Chechnya, with the help of a local administration that has also been accused of repression and the slayings of several prominent journalists and *human rights activists.

Though some sporadic violence continues in Chechnya, said Simon Saradzhyan, a *researcher at Harvard's Belfer Center, the radical *Islam that fueled the separatist movement has migrated to neighboring, predominantly Muslim regions in the *Caucasus.

These include Dagestan, where the Tsarnaevs' father now lives and which both brothers visited last year.

"[The Tsarnaevs'] ethnicity doesn't matter very much here," said Masha Lipman, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

"They don't have a history of fighting in the mountains against Russian troops.""

"Russia warned FBI about terror suspect two years before attack at Boston Marathon" Do you think the Russians really wanted an answer to that question, or was asking the question part of a counterintelligence operation intended to mess with the CIA?

[Magda Hassan]

Boat where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hid 'looked like Swiss cheese' after shootout

Tsarnaev was found when Watertown man looked underneath tarpaulin and found the Boston bombing suspect inside

Adam Gabbatt in Watertown
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 20 April 2013 19.24 BST

The boat was riddled with bullet holes. Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

The boat that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found hiding in looked like "Swiss cheese" after the Boston bombing suspect's shootout with police, the boat's owner told neighbours.

Tsarnaev was taken into custody after a Watertown resident, named locally as David Henneberry, went to check on his boat and found Tsarnaev inside. Swat teams moved in and a gun fight ensued, resulting in Tsarnaev being captured. He is in hospital in a serious condition.

On Saturday, Henneberry was being hailed as the man who helped end a tense 22-hour manhunt, which, until his phone call to police, had been fruitless.

But it came at a cost. The boat a source of immense pride for the owner, according to local residents was no longer seaworthy, being, as it was, riddled with bullet holes.

"He said the boat was like Swiss cheese," said one neighbour, who did not want to give her name but lived a few doors down from the boat owner.

The resident said she had spoken to Henneberry on Friday night, after police had taken away the suspect.

"He was shellshocked," she said. She said Henneberry had lifted the cover on his boat and seen Tsarnaev inside before calling authorities.

"He saw that the tarp was open, and that seemed wrong to him, because we've had a pretty harsh winter and the boat had never been undone. He checks on his boat a lot that's his baby, so that's how he noticed it," she said.

Access was restricted to Franklin Street on Saturday, with police tape blocking off the section of the neighbourhood where Friday's drama played out.

Residents were milling around, intrigued by the small number of television crews who remained on scene.

Images from news teams depicted Tsarnaev sitting up on the side of the boat.

Other pictures showed him receiving medical attention at the scene and with a mask over his mouth in an ambulance.

Rebecca Heavey, 29, lives in the house behind where Tsarnaev was found. Her backyard is adjacent to where the boat was stored. She described the drama as authorities swarmed over her garden to get to Tsarnaev.

"I just saw all the Swat teams in our backyard with their guns drawn," she said. "We were crawling on our elbows through the house, trying to find a safe place. Our doorbell was ringing and we didn't know who it was, we couldn't see the police. We were terrified."

Swat teams used her car for cover, Heavey said, and propped up their guns on the roof.

Heavey said she had ventured out briefly into her backyard on Friday afternoon, breaching the lockdown order to take her dog out for a walk.

"The kid could probably hear us in our backyard from where he was," she said.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was contained in a boat. Surely it was absolutely crucial to take him alive.

Instead, the boat gets riddled with bullets.

It reminds me of the arson on the false flag Symbionese Liberation Army when they were contained in LA in 1974.

Donald "Cinque" DeFreeze could not be allowed to live and tell his tale.

Looks like Dzhokhar wasn't meant to tell his tale either.

Boston Marathon suspect may never be able to be questioned, mayor says

Surviving suspect's injuries prevent him from communicating as FBI faces scrutiny over contact with Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011


Karen McVeigh and Matt Williams in New York, Adam Gabbatt in Boston and Miriam Elder in Makhachkala, Dagestan
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 21 April 2013 19.22 BST
Jump to comments (61)

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
The medical condition of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev meant it was unlikely that the FBI would get any early leads from him, officials said. Photograph: Corbis

The surviving Boston bombings suspect is so seriously injured that investigators may struggle to interrogate him effectively, it was suggested on Sunday, as further questions were raised about the FBI's previous contacts with his dead brother.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old who is accused of planting the pressure-cooker bombs with his older brother Tamerlan that killed three and injured more than 180 at the Boston marathon last Monday, was being treated in hospital for a reported bullet wound to the throat and was unable to speak. He was captured on Friday night, a day after a violent gun battle with police that left his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, dead.

Boston mayor Tom Menino told This Week on ABC that he was so seriously ill that agents might never be able to interrogate him. "We don't know if we'll ever be able to question the individual," he said.

Dan Coats, a Republican member of the Senate intelligence committee, told ABC: "The information that we have is that there was a shot to the throat. It doesn't mean he can't communicate, but right now I think he's in a condition where we can't get any information from him at all."

[Magda Hassan]

Jan, did you take a look at the autopsy photo. I'd love an explanation of the huge clean gash in his left side - right through his ribs and into the lungs. His body showed no evidence of a car driving over it...only the gash and many bullet holes.

Yes, many anomalies in the autopsy photo with the stated events. I have sent it to a pathologist who says that the injuries that you mention look likely to be caused by a knife or some sort of cutting instrument. But there is no evidence that any bomb blew up in his hands. All limbs were intact. This is also stated by the receiving doctor at the hospital where he was treated before he died. He had so many injuries any of which in themselves could have caused his death. The doctor also said that he went into cardiac arrest

"His legs and arms were intact - he wasn't blown into a million pieces" - but he lost a pulse and was in cardiac arrest, meaning his heart and circulation had stopped, so CPR, or cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, was started.

Schoenfeld said he couldn't discuss specific treatments in the case except to say what is usually done in such circumstances, including putting a needle in the chest to relieve pressure that can damage blood vessels, and cutting open the chest and using rib-spreaders to let doctors drain blood in the sac around the heart that can put pressure on the heart and keep it from beating.

"Once you've done all of those things ... if they don't respond there's really nothing you can do. You've exhausted the playbook,'' he said.


After 15 minutes of unsuccessful treatment, doctors pronounced him dead.

I don't see any sign in the autopsy photos of any opening of the chest. This would be very obvious as any one who has seen some one who has had open heart surgery.

[Magda Hassan]

MILITARY MEN WITNESSED AT BOSTON BOMBING IDENTIFIED AS NATIONAL GUARD CST TEAM

http://www.prisonplanet.com/military-men...teams.html

From the above link:

As to why one of the military types at the scene appeared to be wearing a Navy Seal or Craft International logo on his hat, it has been suggested that it is fairly routine for police and military to receive training from Craft, as well as other private military contractor groups, and from former Navy Seals. It is also possible that this person was an ex Seal or just purchased a Craft baseball cap, which are available to buy online.

Maybe things are different in the US but here it is/was an offence to wear anything other than your complete and regulation uniform. No civilian clothes allowed. No mixing and matching. No incomplete uniform. No artistic license. It was a chargeable offense with expensive consequences.