Get ready for a new round of TV commercials warning Americans about drugs causing terrorism. While it's already been widely reported that the younger Boston Marathon bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is a big time stoner, investigators are now saying the brothers financed their attack with money earned selling marijuana. Three people who bought weed from Tsarnaev told the Boston Globe he earned money by selling marijuana, and investigators now believe the brothers may have financed their plot through drug sales.
CBS reports that in addition to Dzhokhar's drug dealing, his older brother Tamerlan was also slinging reefer. "Tsarnaev, who was unemployed and later died in a shootout with police, made money selling marijuana," sources tell the network. There's also speculation Tamerlan may have had some connection to a grisly triple murder in Waltham in 2012—investigators found three men in an apartment with their throats slit and their bodies covered in marijuana. One of the men was Tamerlan's friend.
There months later Tamerlan departed for Dagestan and Chechnya, where family members say he spent most of his time reading the Koran and playing sports. So far there's no indication that the suspects received any outside financing or training for their alleged attack. But it wouldn't have taken much money—investigators have said that the two pressure cooker bombs could have been assembled for about $100 each, with details about how to build them readily available on the Internet.
It has also emerged that contrary to initial reports, Dzhokhar was unarmed when law enforcement officials opened fire on the boat he was found hiding in. No weapons of any kind were discovered on his person or on the boat, and Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis tells the Times, “we will have to see what prompted the volley of shots before the cease-fire was ordered by a superintendent of the Boston police." Here's rather hypnotic helicopter video of the showdown at the boat:
Other law enforcement officials passionately defended the way the operation was handled. “You can’t second-guess what they were doing on that scene,” one official tells the Washington Post. “Their own lives were in danger.” Another says, "They couldn’t assume that he did not have a gun and more explosives.” And FBI spokesman Paul Bresson issued this statement:
Law enforcement was placed in an extraordinarily dangerous situation. They were dealing with an individual who is alleged to have been involved in the bombings at the Boston Marathon. As if that’s not enough, there were indications of a carjacking, gunfire, an ambushed police officer and bombs thrown earlier. In spite of these extraordinary factors, they were able to capture this individual alive with no further harm to law enforcement. It was a tremendously effective outcome under dire circumstances.
Dzhokhar remains hospitalized, and earlier reports that his neck wound was the result of a suicide attempt have been discredited. One SWAT team member tells the Boston Globe the neck would appears to have been caused by shrapnel. Since being read his Miranda rights by a judge on Tuesday, Dzhokhar has stopped answering investigators' questions. The AP reports that after 16 hours of questioning, "investigators were surprised when a magistrate judge and a representative from the U.S. Attorney's office entered the hospital room and read Tsarnaev his rights... Investigators had planned to keep questioning him."
But during the earlier questioning, investigators say Dzhokhar told the FBI that he and his brother were angry about the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the killing of Muslims there. Investigators believe the brothers were "radicalized" through jihadist materials on the Internet. It's unclear if investigators have questioned the mysterious Muslim convert named Misha who, according to family members, "took Tamerlan's brain."
Yesterday, US officials revealed that the CIA had placed Tamerlan Tsarnaev on a terrorism watch list just a few months after the FBI had placed him on a different watch list.
