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Interrogating Dzhokhar
An indication of the complex investigation ahead came Friday night, when an Obama administration official told NBC News that Tsarnaev would not be given a Miranda warning when he is physically able to be interrogated after receiving medical treatment. Instead, the official said, the government will invoke a legal rule known as the "public safety exception," which will enable investigators to question Tsarnaev without first advising him of his right to remain silent and to be afforded legal counsel. The exemption can be invoked when information is needed to protect public safety. In this instance, the government believes it's vital to find out if Tsarnaev planted any other explosives before his capture or whether others might have plotted with him to do so, said the official. The rule waiving the Miranda warning does not set a precise limit on how long a suspect can be interrogated before being advised of his rights, but it likely buys authorities no more than 48 hours. During that time Tsarnaev, 19, will be questioned by a federal government team called the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, consisting of officials of the FBI, CIA and Defense Department. Though he will not have a lawyer present, any statements he makes during the questioning will be admissible in court. Among the questions investigators are certain to focus on is whether he and his brother had help in plotting or carrying out the terrorist attack at the finish line of the marathon. That question took on more urgency when police in New Bedford, Mass., south of Boston, announced Friday evening that three people there had been taken into custody as part of the bombing investigation. In addition to possible co-conspirators in the U.S., the interrogators also will want to know whether the brothers, both ethnic Chechens, received any assistance from overseas. Even if authorities determine that the Tsarnaevs received support from an overseas terrorist organization, the Obama administration official said the government will not seek to declare him an enemy combatant and try him before a military commission, as it has done with senior al Qaeda officials captured overseas and imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Administration officials see that scenario as a non-starter, the official said, particularly given the fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is an American citizen, naturalized last September. Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona issued a statement late Friday urging that the administration hold Tsarnaev as an enemy combatant.
In addition to processing evidence from the bombings, FBI technicians will analyze hundreds of hours of video camera recordings from private and public surveillance and traffic cameras as they attempt to trace the brothers movements both after the attack and before it. Investigators also will obtain and assess phone records, seeing who the brothers were in contact with in the weeks and months leading up to the attacks. Only when they have scrutinized every bit of data, and explored every lead, will they turn over the mountain of evidence they have assembled to prosecutors. It will be up to them to decide what charges the younger Tsarnaev should face and whether to seek the federal death penalty in a state where life in prison is the maximum sentence that can be imposed. But despite such a massive expenditure of time and technological know-how, they may never answer the most haunting question surrounding the case, as President Barack Obama noted. Why, he asked during a brief statement on Dzhokhar Tsarnaevs arrest late Friday, did young men who grew up and studied here as part of our communities and country resort to such violence?
Posted by: Steve White 2013-04-20 |
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