Members of the FBI Evidence Recovery Team inspect the boat where Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding in Watertown, April 20, 2013. Credit: Reuters
Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wrote a note inside the Watertown boat where he was captured, CBS News reported Thursday.
Citing unnamed sources, CBS senior correspondent John Miller reported that the note was written in pen on a wall of the boat’s cabin while Tsarnaev, 19, was hiding from police on April 19, four days after two explosions at the marathon finish line that killed three people and injured 264 others. He was arrested later that night.
Tsarnaev allegedly carried out the bombings with his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The 26-year-old was killed in a shootout with police the night before Dzhokhar was caught, after the brothers allegedly killed an MIT police officer and carjacked a man, leading law enforcement officers on a violent chase. The medical examiner said Dzhokhar hit Tamerlan with an SUV while trying to flee, contributing to the older suspect’s death.
The CBS News report said Dzhokhar, who had been wounded in the gun battle, claimed that the bombings were in retaliation for the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and called the marathon victims “collateral damage.”
“When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims,” the note said.
The brothers were originally from Chechnya. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was questioned by the FBI in 2011, at the request of the Russian government, and added to a counterterrorism database.
That information was never shared with local law enforcement, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told a congressional committee earlier this month.
In the note, Tsarnaev went on to say he didn’t mourn his brother, who he called a martyr, and that he expected to join Tamerlan in paradise.
The note could be used as evidence at Tsarnaev’s eventual trial on federal terrorism charges. Miller reported that much of the information it contained matched what Tsarnaev told investigators, but that those statements were made before Tsarnaev was read his Miranda rights.
Tsarnaev is being held in a prison medical facility at Fort Devens.
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