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Boston bombing suspect cites US wars as motivation, officials say - Washington Post

Posted: 23 Apr 2013 08:54 AM PDT

The 19-year-old suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has told interrogators that the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan motivated him and his brother to carry out the attack, according to U.S. officials familiar with the interviews.

From his hospital bed, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has acknowledged his role in planting the explosives near the marathon finish line on April 15, the officials said. The first successful large-scale bombing in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, era, the Boston attack killed three people and wounded more than 250 others.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation, said Dzhokhar and his older brother, Tamerlan, who was killed by police as the two attempted to avoid capture, do not appear to have been directed by a foreign terrorist organization.

Rather, the officials said, the evidence so far suggests they were "self-radicalized" through Internet sites and U.S. actions in the Muslim world. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has specifically cited the U.S. war in Iraq, which ended in December 2011 with the removal of the last American forces, and in Afghanistan, where President Obama has made plans to end combat operations by the end of 2014.

Obama has made repairing U.S. relations with the Islamic world a foreign policy priority, even as he has expanded drone operations in Pakistan and other countries that have inflamed Muslim public opinion.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has provided limited information to authorities that indicates he and his brother acted independently, without direction or significant influence from Islamist militants overseas. U.S. officials said they are still working to assemble a detailed timeline of a trip the older Tsarnaev took to Russia, but see no evidence that he received instructions there that led to the attack.

"These are persons operating inside the United States without a nexus" to an overseas group, a U.S. intelligence official said.

U.S. officials have said that the FBI questioned Tamerlan Tsarnaev at the behest of Russian authorities who had become concerned that he was becoming radicalized. The request was conveyed to officials at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. U.S. officials said they sought follow-up information from Russia, but that Moscow failed to respond.

Officials also expressed skepticism that Russian authorities were concerned about the elder Tsarnaev's contacts during his trip to Russia. "The evidence points to the fact that they let him into the country and let him out of the country," the U.S. official said. "They didn't take any legal action, which they could have while he was there."

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was charged Monday with using a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property, counts that could carry the death penalty if convicted. He made his first court appearance in an unusual, non-public proceeding in which a federal judge and several lawyers went to his hospital bed in Boston.

The criminal complaint against Tsarnaev, filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, ended a debate over how the case should be handled. Some congressional Republicans had insisted that Tsarnaev be designated an "enemy combatant,'' which would enable the government to charge him under the laws of war in a military commission or to hold him indefinitely.

Israel Says Syria Has Used Chemical Weapons - New York Times

Posted: 23 Apr 2013 09:04 AM PDT

By JODI RUDOREN and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: April 23, 2013

TEL AVIV – Israel's senior military intelligence analyst said Tuesday there was evidence the Syrian government had repeatedly used chemical weapons in the last month, and he criticized the international community for failing to respond, intensifying pressure on the Obama administration to intervene.

"The regime has increasingly used chemical weapons," said Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, research commander in the intelligence directorate of the Israeli Defense Forces, echoing assertions made by Britain and France. "The very fact that they have used chemical weapons without any appropriate reaction," he added, "is a very worrying development, because it might signal that this is legitimate."

General Brun's statements, made at a security conference here, are the most definitive by an Israeli official to date regarding evidence of possible chemical weapons attacks on March 19 near Aleppo and Damascus. Another military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the evidence had been presented to the Obama administration — which has declared the use of chemicals a "red line" that could prompt American action in Syria — but that Washington has not fully accepted the analysis.

None of the assertions — by Israel, Britain or France — have been made with physical proof of chemical weapons use. Experts say the most definitive way to prove the use of chemical weapons is to promptly gain access to the site to collect soil samples and examine suspected victims.

The Syrian government, which has accused insurgents of using chemical weapons and has requested that a United Nations forensics team investigate, has so far refused to allow that team to enter because of a dispute over the scope of its inquiry.

In Brussels, at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, Secretary of State John Kerry urged that members of the alliance be ready to respond if it is determined that Syria had in fact used chemical weapons.

"We should also carefully and collectively consider how NATO is prepared to respond to protect its members from a Syrian threat, including any potential chemical weapons threat," Mr. Kerry said. He did not specify in his publicly released remarks what planning he wanted from members of the NATO alliance.

Mr. Kerry also said he had talked by telephone Tuesday morning with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and that Mr. Netanyahu had told him that he could not confirm the assertions of chemical weapons use. "He was not in a position to confirm that in the conversation that I had," Mr. Kerry said.

"I don't know yet what the facts are," Mr. Kerry added. "I don't think anybody knows what they are."

In briefings earlier on Tuesday, the Israelis said they believed that the attacks March 19 involved the use of sarin gas, the same agent used in a 1995 attack in the Tokyo subway that killed 13.

The Syrian attacks killed "a couple of dozens," the military official said, in what Israel judged as "a test" by President Bashar al-Assad of the international community's response. He said the government had deployed chemicals a handful of times since, but that details of those attacks were sketchier.

"Their fear of using it is much lower than before using it," the official said. "If somebody would take any reaction, maybe it would deter them from using it again." Regarding possible further attacks, he added, "Now I'm more worried than I was before."

Israel, which is in a technical state of war with Syria, has been deeply reluctant to act on its own in Syria, for fear that it could bolster President Assad by uniting anti-Israel sentiment. But the public statements regarding the attacks, days after the British and French governments wrote to the United Nations Secretary General saying they, too, had evidence of chemical use, complicates the situation for Washington.

Reporting was contributed by Thom Shanker from Amman, Jordan, Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon, and Michael R. Gordon from Brussels.

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Selasa, 23 April 2013