Here are some of the latest developments in the Boston Marathon bombing investigation:
– “Members of the MIT community” are being asked – at the request of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s campus police chief and the Middlesex County district attorney’s office – to provide authorities with information related to the night of April 18, MIT administrator Israel Ruiz said in a letter posted on the school’s website. Authorities have said they believe MIT police officer Sean Collier was killed that night by the suspected Boston Marathon bombers,
– 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, Massachusetts, spokeswoman Stephanie Guyotte said Thursday. Authorities have said they suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his late brother, Tamerlan, killed Collier in Cambridge and later were involved in a chase – during which they allegedly throw bombs out their windows – and shootout that ended in nearby Watertown. “We’re still investigating,” Guyotte said.
Previously reported:
– Russia raised concerns to U.S. authorities about Zubeidat Tsarnaev, the mother of the Boston Marathon bombings’ suspects, in 2011 at the same time they asked the U.S. about her son Tamerlan, several sources told CNN.
– Also, U.S. authorities added both the mother and son 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.
– FBI agents interviewed the mother as part of the investigation into Tamerlan Tsarnaev, whose case was closed after several months.
– Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s phone number was traced to numbers that came up in two other investigations into terror suspects, according to a senator who attended classified briefings about the Boston attack investigation. The connection between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the two other suspects was “twice removed,” meaning he was in contact with people who had been in contact with the suspect, a U.S. government official said.
– Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said investigators believe the Boston bombing suspects were planning another attack “likely in the Boston area.” “The notion they decided to go to New York was a rushed event after this thing unraveled on them,” Rogers said.
– Thirty-four of the more than 260 people wounded in last week’s explosions were still being treated Thursday evening in Boston-area hospitals, according to a CNN tally. Only one of them – at Boston Medical Center – is in critical condition. At least 14 people underwent amputations because of the blasts.
– The mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects said Thursday that she’d called an ambulance to take her husband, Anzor Tsarnaev, to a hospital in the southern Russian city of Makhachkala. It was not immediately known whether Anzor Tsarnaev was ever admitted to a hospital and, if so, if he is still there.
–Federal agents who swarmed the residence of University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth students on Friday “went in heavy” because they thought the surviving Boston Marathon bombings suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, might be inside, a federal law enforcement source told CNN.
– Dzhokhar Tsarnaev shared a cell phone with a Russian-speaking studentfrom Kazhakstan who was detained in the raid, something the law enforcement source said authorities had determined through cell phone records and their social media interaction. This other student was in a picture with Dzhokhar shot last year in New York’s Time Square.
– This student and another taken into custody in the raid continued to be detained Thursday. The young men, both foreign exchange students from Kazhakstan, are being held by federal authorities on alleged visa violations.
– The two students, who haven’t been identified by name, are not thought to be linked to last week’s attack in Boston, sources stress. 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.
– Dzhokhar Tsarnaev revealed to investigators that he and his brother intended to drive to New York and “detonate additional explosives in Times Square,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. Bloomberg said the FBI told New York officials this information Wednesday night.
– FBI Director Robert Mueller traveled to Boston on Thursday on a trip that was scheduled before the bombings, an FBI official said. He is also meeting with members of the field office who are working on the bombings case.
– At least one of the two bombs used in Boston – the second to explode – was detonated by remote control, a law enforcement official told CNN on Thursday. Previously, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Maryland Democrat and member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev used a remote control device similar to those used to control toy cars to detonate both bombs at the marathon.
– A body found Tuesday is that of Sunil Tripathi, a missing Brown University student who was falsely identified by some on social media as being one of the Boston Marathon bombers. The Rhode Island State Medical Examiner’s office said Thursday that the body has been identified as that of Tripathi, missing since March 15. No foul play is suspected in his death, the office said.
– No firearm was found in the boat where the surviving Boston Marathon attack suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was found, several sources from different agencies familiar with the investigation said Thursday. Authorities had said in a criminal complaint there was a standoff between the boat’s occupant and police involving gunfire.
– A ranking Democrat on a House intelligence subcommittee said Thursday that he does not believe the FBI and the CIA failed to share relevant information with each other regarding Boston Marathon attack suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Sources told CNN previously that Russia had separately asked the FBI and the CIA to look into Tsarnaev in 2011. “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, said Thursday. “So I don’t think this was a situation where either agency was withholding something from the other. … Some are racing to say that the FBI dropped the ball or the agencies weren’t talking to each other, and that just doesn’t seem to be the case.” Schiff is a ranking member of the Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence.
Case raises questions about post 9/11 intelligence reforms
– The father of bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told reporters that he could leave the Russian region of Dagestan on Thursday for the United States. The father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said previously that he will cooperate in the bombing investigation in Boston, where his lone surviving son, Dzhokhar, is hospitalized and charged in the case.
– The suspect’s mother said Thursday in Dagestan that U.S. officials “already told us they will not let us see Dzhokhar.” Zubeidat Tsarnaev earlier said that she believed the bombings were staged and fake. But she also said she feels sorry for the victims and is resolute in her belief that her sons were not involved. Zubeidat Tsarnaev is wanted on 2012 felony charges of shoplifting and property damage in Massachusetts, according to court officials. It is unclear whether returning to the United States would lead to her arrest.
– Russian President Vladimir Putin urged closer cooperation between with the United States on security issues in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings. “This tragedy should motivate us to work closer together,” Putin said during a live televised call-in session in Moscow on Thursday. “If we combine our efforts, we will not suffer blows like that.”
– The body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev remains in the custody of the Massachusetts chief medical examiner, a spokesman for the medical examiner’s office said. Terrel Harris also said the cause of Tsarnaev’s death has yet to be determined.
– Months after the FBI cleared Tamerlan Tsarnaev after a request from Russia to investigate him, Russia also approached the CIA to look into Tsarnaev’s shift toward Islamic extremism, a government official tells CNN. But the information provided by the Russians in November 2011 was “basically the same” information that had been given to the FBI, the government official said, adding that the communication sent to the CIA was a “warning letter.”
– Investigators are looking into the possibility Tamerlan Tsarnaev – who was married with a young daughter, whom he frequently cared for while his wife worked as a home health aide – may have helped finance the bomb plot through illegal drug sales, according to a source familiar with the investigation.
– The name of one Boston Marathon bombing suspect was included in U.S. law enforcement and counterterrorism databases, but he was not on any watch list that would have prevented him from flying or required additional screening when he left or entered the country, intelligence and law enforcement officials said.
– Human rights activist Kheda Saratova in Makhachkala, Dagestan, told CNN that the parents of the Tsarnaev brothers talked Wednesday with U.S. investigators and the Russian Federal Security Service.
– Vice President Joe Biden spoke Wednesday at a memorial service for Collier, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus officer who authorities say was killed by the suspected Boston Marathon bombers last week.
– Biden referred to the suspects as “two twisted, perverted, cowardly, knock-off jihadis.”
– Citing terrorists in general, he said, “They do it to instill fear, to have us – in the name of our safety and security – jettison what we value most, and the world most values about us: our open society, our system of justice that guarantees freedom, the access of all Americans to opportunity, the free flow of information and people across this country, our transparency, that’s their target.”
– The suspects in last week’s bombings in Boston may have been planning to “party” in New York, that city’s police commissioner, Ray Kelly, said Wednesday, citing comments from the younger brother. “Information that we received said something about partying, having a party,” he said.
– Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have been “brainwashed” by a friend from Cambridge, Massachusetts named Misha – an Armenian who had converted to Islam – said the dead man’s uncle, Ruslan Tsarni.
– Elmirza Khozhgov, a former brother-in-law of the brothers, said the elder Tsarnaev introduced him to a man named Misha, but “I didn’t witness him making him radical.”
– A spokeswoman for the Islamic Society of Boston said no one in the group’s network appeared to have heard of the person named Misha.
– The spokeswoman, Nichole Mossalam, said the group was prepared to hold a funeral for the dead brother but had not been asked to do so. Several of the group’s imams said they would not be comfortable presiding over a funeral for the elder brother, so the organization would probably ask a lay person to officiate, she said.
– The surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, has indicated to investigators that it was his brother, not any international terrorist group, who conceived the attack, a U.S. government source said.
– The source said preliminary interviews with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev suggest that the brothers were self-radicalized jihadists.
– James Taylor sang at the memorial service at MIT, accompanied by the MIT Symphony Orchestra and a vocal ensemble from the university.
– The suspects received welfare benefits as children, the state government says; Tamerlan received them for his family through last year.
– Authorities reopened the site of the bomb blasts Wednesday to pedestrian traffic after replacing missing bricks and patching up concrete.
– Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has cited the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as motivating factors behind the attack, a U.S. government official said Tuesday.
– Dzhokhar Tsarnaev remains hospitalized in fair condition.
