Boston bomb suspect moved to prison from hospital

By Scott Malone and Tim McLaughlin

BOSTON (Reuters) - Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been moved to a prison medical center from the hospital where he had been held since his arrest a week ago while recovering from gunshot wounds, U.S. officials said on Friday.

The 19-year-old ethnic Chechen, wounded in a late-night shootout with police on April 18 hours after authorities released pictures of him and his older brother as suspects, was charged on Monday and could face the death penalty if convicted. His brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died in the shootout.

More details emerged on Friday in the Boston Globe newspaper about the brothers' movements in the hours before the shootout.

A man who said he was carjacked at gunpoint in his Mercedes sport-utility vehicle on the night of April 18, described 90 harrowing minutes, first with Dzhokhar following in another car and then with both men in his Mercedes.

The man, identified in a Globe interview only by the nickname "Danny" at his request, said one of his attackers, later identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, told him he did the bombing and later killed a university campus policeman.

"I don't want to die," Danny, 26, recalled thinking as the brothers drove him around, making banal small talk, according to the Globe interview. "I have a lot of dreams that haven't come true yet."

New York City officials said on Thursday that Dzhokhar told investigators in the hospital that after the FBI released their pictures, the pair made an impromptu plan to drive to New York and set off more bombs in Times Square. New York has been on heightened alert since the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The brothers' plan to go to New York was foiled when they realized that the Mercedes did not have enough fuel. They stopped at a gas station, and when Dzhokhar went in to pay, Tamerlan put down his gun to fiddle with the car's navigation system, the Globe said.

When Tamerlan dropped his guard, Danny jumped from the car and ran, the Globe reported.

"I was trying to save myself," Danny, 26, who is trained as an engineer, told the newspaper.

He kept the brothers calm by playing up his outsider status, although at first they were puzzled by his Chinese accent, the Globe said. After determining that the victim was Chinese, Tamerlan Tsarnaev identified himself as a Muslim, the newspaper reported.

"Chinese are very friendly to Muslims!" Danny said, according to the Globe. "We are so friendly to Muslims."

Danny was put in touch with the Globe by James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University in Boston, where the man was a student, Fox told Reuters. Fox writes a blog for the Boston Globe website.

The FBI said on Friday that no other people had been arrested in the investigation. The parents of the brothers have said they believe their sons were not involved in the bombings.

U.S. lawmakers are demanding answers from security officials about what they might have known about the brothers, particularly Tamerlan, before the bombing on April 15 at the marathon finish line that killed three people and injured 264 others.

In 2011, Russia had asked the FBI to question Tamerlan because of concerns that he may have been an Islamic militant. The FBI has said it interviewed him but found no cause to continue investigating.

OVERNIGHT PRISON MOVE

Overnight Thursday, authorities moved Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to Fort Devens, Massachusetts, from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where some of the victims were also being treated. Devens is about 39 miles west of Boston. The move was announced by the U.S. Marshals Service, which is responsible for defendants in custody.

The prison specializes in inmates who need long-term medical or mental health care, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website. It currently holds about 1,000 prisoners.

A pair of law enforcement officers were stationed outside the prison, on a highway in a far suburb of Boston, to keep media away from the gates.

Lawmakers on Friday continued their inquiry into whether investigators failed to adequately follow up on earlier leads on Tamerlan Tsarnaev from Russian security.

"Clearly enough was not done in order to monitor the activities here, especially given the fact that it wasn't one heads-up we were given but several," U.S. Representative Ed Royce, a Republican who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNN.

On a six-month trip to Russia last year, Tamerlan Tsarnaev attended one of the area's most radical mosques, Royce said.

A trust gap remains between U.S. and Russian intelligence services, former Cold War rivals. U.S. officials said they consider counterterrorism information from Moscow's bitter conflict with Islamic militants in Chechnya and other parts of the volatile north Caucasus especially suspect.

A little more than three years ago top Boston FBI agent Richard DesLauriers, the same man running the bombing investigation, took part in an FBI operation code-named "Ghost Stories" in which 10 people were rounded up because the United States believed they were Russian spies.

Two of those people, Donald Heathfield and Ann Foley, were arrested in Cambridge, Massachusetts, about a mile west of the house the Tsarnaevs lived in. All 10 were handed over to Russia in a carefully choreographed exchange for four Russians who had been jailed for working for western governments.

(Additional reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Grant McCool)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/boston-suspects-had-spontaneous-bomb-plan-york-013726316--sector.html

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