BOSTON, May 17 (Reuters) – A federal judge on Friday denied
a request by lawyers for accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev to take photographs of their imprisoned client without
sharing them with prosecutors.
The defense wanted to document 19-year-old Tsarnaev’s
injuries and mental state while being held in federal prison to
provide evidence of “the voluntariness of his statements” while
under interrogation, according to court papers.
Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler, of U.S. District Court for
Massachusetts, said the request posed a security risk, but said
she would allow prison staff to take photographs of Tsarnaev in
the presence of his lawyers.
She said the pictures would not be protected by
attorney-client confidentiality and would have to be shared with
federal prosecutors.
Tsarnaev’s lead attorney was not immediately available for
comment.
Tsarnaev was found hiding in a boat in Watertown,
Massachusetts, four days after the April 15 blasts, which killed
three people and injured 264 others at the finish line of the
Boston Marathon.
He was shot in the throat before his capture and is being
held in a prison hospital west of Boston. He faces charges that
could carry the death penalty if he is convicted.
A CBS News report on Thursday, citing anonymous sources,
said that Tsarnaev left a handwritten message inside the hull of
the boat describing the attack as retribution for U.S. wars in
Muslim countries.
The report said Tsarnaev described his older brother and
fellow suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who died in a gunbattle
with police, as “a martyr.”
A spokeswoman for the FBI in Boston, Katherine Gulotta,
declined to confirm or deny the report.
She also declined to confirm or deny a report that federal
investigators questioned a Chechen refugee, ex-rebel Musa
Khadzhimuratov, at his home in Manchester, New Hampshire, saying
only that “the FBI was in New Hampshire earlier this week
conducting court authorized activity.”
A New York Times article on Thursday quoted Khadzhimuratov
as saying he had met with Tamerlan Tsarnaev a few weeks before
the bombing, but that they talked about family, “not religion or
politics.” Attempts to contact Khadzhimuratov directly were not
successful.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been on a U.S. government database of
potential terrorism suspects, and the United States had twice
been warned by Russia that he might be an Islamic militant,
according to U.S. security officials.
The FBI identified the ethnic Chechen brothers as suspects
from video and pictures at the scene.
(Reporting by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Scott Malone and
Leslie Adler)
