Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tsarnaev charged

Boston. US officials have brought charges against Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzohkhar Tsarnaev while he lay in his hospital bed, a federal court official said.

Monday, April 22, 2013
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was questioned in his hospital bed. Net photo.

Boston. US officials have brought charges against Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzohkhar Tsarnaev while he lay in his hospital bed, a federal court official said."There has been a sealed complaint filed,” said Gary Wente, circuit executive for the US Courts for the First Circuit, who said that a magistrate judge was present when Tsarnaev was charged at his bed in Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital on Monday.Police declined to comment on media reports he was communicating with authorities in writing."There have been widely published reports that he is [communicating silently]. I wouldn’t dispute that, but I don’t have any specific information on that myself,” Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told CNN on Sunday. "We’re very anxious to talk to him and the investigators will be doing that as soon as possible.”The White House said that the surviving suspect in the Boston bombings would not be treated as an "enemy combatant” but would be tried through the US civilian justice system."He will not be treated as an enemy combatant,” Jay Carney, the Whitehouse spokesperson, said following calls from some Republicans for 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to be granted the same status as "War on Terror” detainees."We will prosecute this terrorist through our civilian system of justice,” Carney said, arguing that US law prohibited a US citizen being tried in the military court system.Carney said that since the September 11, 2001 attacks the US government had repeatedly and successfully used civilian courts to try terror suspects."The system has repeatedly proven that it can successfully handle the threat we continue to face,” Carney said.Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was captured with throat injuries that, coupled with sedatives administered at the Boston hospital where he is being treated, had left him incapable of speech and initially prevented authorities from questioning him.Tsarnaev’s capture on Friday night ended a manhunt that virtually shut down greater Boston for some 20 hours. His older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was pronounced dead after a gunfight with police a day earlier.Investigators are seeking, among things, to determine whether the two suspects acted alone.Boston’s police commissioner and mayor have both said they believed the brothers were on their own."I am confident that they were the two major actors in the violence that occurred,” Ed Davis, the police commissioner, told CNN on Sunday ahead of the charges.