Boston bombing suspect wrote message in boat: CBS News report

The note summed up with the idea that 'when you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims': CBS News


Reuters May 17, 2013
A photograph of Djohar Tsarnaev, who is believed to be Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, is seen on his page of Russian social networking site Vkontakte (VK), as pictured on a monitor and a mobile phone in St. Petersburg April 19, 2013. PHOTO: REUTERS

WASHINGTON: Accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was found hiding in a boat days after the blasts, left a handwritten message describing the attack as retribution for US wars in Muslim countries, CBS News reported on Thursday.

The CBS News report, citing anonymous sources, said that Tsarnaev used a pen to write the message on an interior wall of the boat, where police found him bleeding from gunshot wounds four days after the April 15 bombing.

The note summed up with the idea that "when you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims," CBS News reported.

CBS News did not make clear how its sources knew the information and Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the report.

A spokeswoman for the FBI in Boston, Katherine Gulotta, declined to confirm or deny the report.

The CBS News report said Tsarnaev, 19, described his older brother and fellow suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who died in a gunbattle with police, as "a martyr."

"Basically, the note says ... the bombings were retribution for the US crimes against Muslims in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and that the victims of the Boston bombing were 'collateral damage,' the same way innocent victims have been collateral damage in US wars around the world," said CBS News reporter John Miller, who is a former spokesman for the FBI.

The bombings at the finish line of the world-famous marathon killed three people and injured 264 others. The FBI identified the ethnic Chechen brothers as suspects from video and pictures at the scene.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested in Watertown, Massachusetts, on April 19 after a daylong manhunt and lockdown of much of the Boston area. He is being held in a prison hospital west of Boston and faces charges that could carry the death penalty if he is convicted.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been on a US government database of potential terrorism suspects and the United States had twice been warned by Russia that he might be an Islamic militant, according to US security officials.

COMMENTS (11)

somy | 11 years ago | Reply

@Suraj: the corrolary of “when you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims,” can be

as you wrote "when you attack one Muslim, you will be attacked by all Muslims".

This also means "when you are attacked by one muslim, you are attacked by all muslims"

and hence when the reponse of Non-muslims is "when you are attacked by one muslim- you shall attack all muslims" , muslims shall not say that it is an act of individual and shall not be blamed on all muslims, OR "he/she cannot be a muslim. ".

Muslims shall be ready for same treatment as Ummah thinks.afterall Action will beget Reaction it deserves.

scotchpak | 11 years ago | Reply

I think you mean when you attack one human you attack all humanity@Jimmy:

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