General

6 new developments in the Boston Marathon bombing

Boylston Street reopens, authorities get new information from the suspect

Two bank workers walk from their bank on Boylston Street in Boston on Tuesday, April 23, 2013. (Elise Amendola/AP)

Two days after Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, started communicating with police, there are many new headlines about the deadly event that left three dead and injured 264 more, at last count.

Here’s a roundup of the headlines from Wednesday morning:

1. Boylston Street, the site of the bombing, has reopened.

After more than a week of police investigation at the site, Boston Mayor Tom Menino shared some good news on his Twitter account Wednesday morning:

2. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was on an FBI watch list.

Reuters reports that the second bombing suspect, who was killed during a shootout with police on the night of Thursday, April 18, was on a classified list of potential terrorists. The list, however, is a long one and it doesn’t mean that FBI was watching Tamerlan Tsarnaev closely. FBI had also spoken to him in 2011, reports Reuters.

3. There are likely no links between the Boston bombing and foreign terrorist groups.

According to The Washington Post, suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been communicating from his hospital bed where he has been since his arrest Friday. He reportedly told investigators that he and his brother were angry at U.S. involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but did not receive coaching from an outside group. “These are persons operating inside the United States without a nexus,” an agent told The Washington Post. This fits with previous theories of “self-radicalization,” meaning that the brothers were not connected to an outside terrorist cell.

4. Internet sources likely aided the suspects.

Without direct connections to outside terrorist sources, the suspects had to learn to build a bomb somewhere. A source tells The New York Times that the suspects likely used an online magazine called Inspire, which is the English-language magazine of the affiliate of al-Qaeda in Yemen. “The increasing signals are that these were individuals who were radicalized, especially the older brother, over a period of time — radicalized by Islamist fundamentalist terrorists, basically using Internet sources to gain not just the types of philosophical beliefs that radicalized them, but also learning components of how to do these sorts of things,” Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters after a classified FBI briefing Tuesday.

5. The suspects may have been planning more attacks, potentially in New York City.

A report in the Boston Globe quotes an anonymous source who says that Tamerlan Tsarnaev told a witness: “We just killed a cop. We blew up the Marathon. And now we’re going to New York. Don’t [expletive] with us.” The witness was the man who the brothers allegedly kidnapped in order to use his car in their escape attempt. That attempt ended with the elder Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s death. The man was able to escape unharmed when the car stopped, according to the affidavit filed in court.

6. Funerals continue for the victims of the bombing.

Martin Richard, 8, was remembered during a private funeral Tuesday. A funeral for Sean A. Collier, an MIT campus police officer who was killed while authorities attempted to apprehend the suspects Thursday night, was also held Tuesday. A public funeral for Collier is scheduled on the MIT campus Wednesday and Vice-President Joe Biden is expected to attend. The funeral for victim Krystle Campbell was held Monday.

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