After week of frustration, body of suspect is buried in undisclosed location
By Jay Lindsay and Michelle R. Smith
Associated Press
BOSTON (AP) — The widow of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev still faces questions from federal authorities and has hired a criminal lawyer with experience defending terrorism cases.
Katherine Russell added New York lawyer Joshua Dratel to her legal team, her attorney Amato DeLuca said Wednesday. Dratel has represented a number of terrorism suspects in federal courts and military commissions, including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detainee David Hicks, who attended an al-Qaida-linked training camp in Afghanistan.
Dratel’s “unique, specialized experience” will help ensure that Russell “can assist in the ongoing investigation in the most constructive way possible,” DeLuca said in a written statement.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, ethnic Chechen brothers from southern Russia living in Massachusetts, are accused of planting two shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs near the marathon finish line, killing three people and injuring about 260.
DeLuca said Russell, who has not been charged with any crime, will continue to meet with investigators as “part of a series of meetings over many hours where she has answered questions.”
Providence-based DeLuca and Miriam Weizenbaum have been representing Russell, who is from Rhode Island. They specialize in civil cases such as personal injury law.
An FBI spokeswoman wouldn’t comment when asked Wednesday whether Russell is cooperating. DeLuca has said Russell had no reason to suspect her husband and his brother in the deadly April 15 bombing.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was captured hiding in a tarp-covered boat outside a house in a Boston suburb, was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction to kill. Their mother has said the charges against them are lies.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a getaway attempt after a gun battle with police.
In Washington, Boston’s police commissioner told lawmakers Thursday conducting the first congressional hearing on the Marathon bombings that government should tighten security around celebratory public events and consider using more undercover officers, special police units and technology, including surveillance cameras — but only in ways that don’t run afoul of civil liberties.
“I do not endorse actions that move Boston and our nation into a police state mentality, with surveillance cameras attached to every light pole in the city,” Commissioner Edward Davis said in prepared remarks for the House Homeland Security Committee.
The FBI and CIA separately received vague warnings from Russia’s government in 2011 that Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother were religious militants.
Russell, Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s wife, had wanted his body turned over to his side of the family, which claimed it.
Tsarnaev’s body was buried in an undisclosed location outside the city of Worcester, police said Thursday after a frustrating weeklong search for a community willing to take the body.
“As a result of our public appeal for help, a courageous and compassionate individual came forward to provide the assistance needed to properly bury the deceased,” Worcester police said in a statement.
Sgt. Kerry Hazelhurst said the body was no longer in Worcester and is now entombed. Police did not specify where the body was taken.
Tsarnaev’s body had been at the Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors. Director Peter Stefan had said he could not find a community willing to take the body, including Cambridge, where the family had lived for a decade. Tsarnaev’s uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, had custody of the body.
