FBI to brief lawmakers on deceased bombing suspect

The FBI will brief the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday about what it learned from an interview it conducted in 2011 with Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, according to Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.).

“What we want to do is to see when the FBI investigated the tip that came from Russia about whether or not bomber No. 1, who came from Russia, was really cleared about what Russia was concerned about,” Ruppersberger told CNN on Tuesday. “We will have a classified hearing about it today at five o’clock.”

The FBI will brief the Senate Intelligence Committee on the same matter at a hearing earlier in the afternoon.

Tsarnaev, 26, was killed after a firefight early Friday morning after the police tracked down him and his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19. They are the only suspects in last week’s Boston Marathon bombing.

Lawmakers have pledged to hold hearings into how the brothers operated under the radar of the FBI after the Russian government notified federal investigators that the older brother was a potential threat. The tip from Russian authorities came after the suspect spent six months in two Russian provinces in 2010 and 2011 before returning to the U.S.

Ruppersberger, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, said he hoped to find out what might have influenced the older brother during his time abroad, and how he learned the skills necessary to put together a bomb.

“When he went to Russia, it seemed when he came back a lot of things changed and also his younger brother’s attitude started to change,” Ruppersberger said. “And as more evidence comes out — about when he came back from Russia, did he become more orthodox in his Muslim religion, did that make him change? And one of the things we’re looking at also — when you have these bombs, what kind of sophistication? How were they trained to make the bombs?”

Ruppersberger said reports that cellphones were used to detonate the explosives were troubling, because it indicates a higher degree of sophistication. The Maryland Democrat said it didn’t appear there were any third parties involved, and that the brothers were likely acting as lone wolves, which he said is a more difficult threat for intelligence officials to detect.

“Those of us who have been in the intelligence committee a while have always been concerned about the lone wolf and a lone wolf doesn’t just mean one individual, it means a small group of people that will come in under the radar,” he said. “And why there’s a concern about that is that when you’re under the radar we can’t get the intelligence we would normally get.”

“After 9/11 we’re the most sophisticated country in the world as it relates to receiving any intelligence from people or from a technical point of view,” he continued. “If in fact there’s chatter or there’s a big type of plot, we will probably pick it up. But what worries us are the type of situations like the Times Square bomber, the underwear bomber, the shoe bomber, these were all under the radar.”

View Comments

View the original article here

ACLU calls for Miranda rights for Boston bombing suspect

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is calling for the Obama administration to read the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings his legal rights.

The Department of Justice indicated Friday that the administration would not read 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights, citing a public safety exception.

But Anthony Romero, the ACLU's executive director, said Saturday that the immediate threat is over and that Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen who became a naturalized U.S. citizen last year, should now be treated like any other suspected criminal.

“Every criminal defendant is entitled to be read Miranda rights," Romero said in a statement. "The public safety exception should be read narrowly. It applies only when there is a continued threat to public safety and is not an open-ended exception to the Miranda rule."

Tsarnaev was captured Friday night in the Boston suburb of Watertown after leading law enforcers on a tense, day-long manhunt that captured the attention of the nation and locked down much of Greater Boston.

Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, are suspected of planting the two bombs that detonated Monday near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 170.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police in Watertown in the early hours of Friday morning. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured Friday night after another shootout with police roughly a mile away. 

Legal experts say the younger Tsarnaev, who remains in a Boston hospital in serious but stable condition, could face the death penalty if convicted on federal terrorism charges. 

A number of powerful Republicans – including Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.), as well as Rep. Peter King (N.Y.) – are urging the Obama administration to treat Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as an enemy combatant.

"Under the Law of War we can hold this suspect as a potential enemy combatant not entitled to Miranda warnings or the appointment of counsel," McCain and Graham said Friday in a joint statement. "Our goal at this critical juncture should be to gather intelligence and protect our nation from further attacks."

Romero and the ACLU are pushing back against that notion, arguing that even those suspected of the most heinous crimes have constitutional protections that law enforcers must abide.

"Every criminal defendant has a right to be brought before a judge and to have access to counsel. We must not waver from our tried-and-true justice system, even in the most difficult of times,"  Romero said. 

"Denial of rights is un-American and will only make it harder to obtain fair convictions."

Miriam Conrad, public defender for Massachusetts, told the Associated Press that there are "serious issues regarding possible interrogation." The news service reported that federal public defender's office in Massachusetts will represent Tsarnaev once he is charged.

--This report was updated at 4:42 p.m.

View Comments

View the original article here