Boston Marathon bombing

The 117th annual Boston Marathon was run on Patriots' Day, April 15, 2013. At , two bombs detonated about apart at the finish line on Boylston Street near Copley Square. The first exploded outside Marathon Sports at 671–673 Boylston Street at 2:49:43p.m. At the time of the first explosion, the race clock at the finish line showed 04:09:43—the elapsed time since the Wave 3 start at 10:40a.m. The second bomb exploded at 2:49:57p.m., 14 seconds later and one block farther west at 755 Boylston Street. The explosions took place nearly two hours after the winning runner crossed the finish line, but with more than 5,700 runners yet to finish. Windows on adjacent buildings were blown out, but there was no structural damage. Runners continued to cross the line until 2:57p.m. == Casualties and initial response ==

Rescue workers and medical personnel, on site as usual for the marathon, gave aid as additional police, fire, and medical units were dispatched, Police, following emergency plans, diverted all remaining runners to Boston Common and Kenmore Square. The nearby Lenox Hotel and other buildings surrounding the scene were evacuated. The airspace over Boston was restricted, and departures halted from Boston's Logan International Airport. Some local transit service was halted as well. The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency suggested that people trying to contact those in the vicinity use text messaging instead of voice calls because of the crowded cell phone lines. Cell phone service in Boston was congested but remained in operation, despite some media reports stating that cell service was shut down to prevent cell phones from being used as detonators. The American Red Cross helped concerned friends and family receive information about runners and casualties. The Boston Police Department also set up a call helpline for people concerned about relatives or acquaintances to contact and a line for people to provide information. Google Person Finder activated their disaster service under Boston Marathon Explosions to log known information about missing people as a publicly viewable file. Due to the closure of several hotels near the blast zone, a number of visitors were left with nowhere to stay; many Boston-area residents opened their homes to them. == Initial investigation ==

of the White House in which officials briefed President Barack Obama on the investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation led the investigation, assisted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. United States government officials stated that no intelligence reports suggested such an attack. Representative Peter King, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said: "I received two top secret briefings last week on the current threat levels in the United States, and there was no evidence of this at all." Evidence found near the blast sites included bits of metal, nails, ball bearings, black nylon pieces from a backpack, remains of an electronic circuit board and wiring. A pressure cooker lid was found on a nearby rooftop. Both of the improvised explosive devices were pressure cooker bombs manufactured by the bombers. Authorities confirmed that the brothers used bomb-making instructions found in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's Inspire magazine. After the suspects were identified, The Boston Globe reported that Tamerlan purchased fireworks from a fireworks store in New Hampshire. == April 18–19 shootings and search ==

Release of suspect photos Jeff Bauman was immediately adjacent to one of the bombs and lost both legs; he wrote while in the hospital: "Bag, saw the guy, looked right at me". As seen on video, the suspects stayed to observe the chaos after the explosions, then walked away casually. The public sent authorities a deluge of photographs and videos. MIT shooting and carjacking Hours after the FBI released photos of the two suspects in the bombing, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev visited their family's apartment in Cambridge. There, they obtained five improvised explosive devices (IEDs), ammunition, a semiautomatic handgun, and a machete. The two brothers then drove to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Collier, aged 27, was seated in his police car near Building 32 on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus. (), hostage and told him that he was responsible for the Boston bombing and for shooting Collier. Tamerlan's younger brother Dzhokhar then drove the stolen SUV toward Tamerlan and the police, who unsuccessfully tried to drag Tamerlan out of the car's path and handcuff him; Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Police Officer Richard H. Donohue Jr. Boston Police Department officer Dennis Simmonds was injured by a hand grenade and died on April 10, 2014. Only one firearm, Tsarnaev's Ruger P95, was recovered at the scene. That firearm was found to have a defaced serial number. Further investigation and post-shootout search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Records on the Honda left at the Watertown shootout scene identified the bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar "Jahar" Tsarnaev. Agencies on the scene were the FBI; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; Diplomatic Security Service; HSI-ICE; the National Guard; the Boston, Cambridge, and Watertown Police departments; and the Massachusetts State Police. The show of force was the first major field test of the interagency task forces created in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The brothers' father spoke from his home in Makhachkala, Dagestan, encouraging Dzhokhar to: "Give up. You have a bright future ahead of you. Come home to Russia." He continued, "If they killed him, then all hell would break loose." A subsequent report indicated that the firing lasted for a shorter time. The confusion was caused in part by a lack of clearly identified and coordinated law enforcement command of the thousands of officers from surrounding communities who self-deployed into the Watertown area during the events. After Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was taken into custody, the FBI revealed that it had investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 after the FSB, the Russian intelligence agency, had expressed concern about his potential radicalization. That investigation included an interview with Tamerlan Tsarnaev. At that time, the FBI found no evidence of terrorist involvement by Tamerlan Tsarnaev. On April 24, investigators reported that they had reconstructed the bombs, and believed that they had been triggered by remote controls used for toy cars. == Legal proceedings ==

Interrogation United States senators Kelly Ayotte, Saxby Chambliss, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain, and Representative Peter T. King suggested that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a U.S. citizen, should be tried as an unlawful enemy combatant rather than as a criminal, potentially preventing him from obtaining legal counsel. Charges and detention On April 22, 2013, formal criminal charges were brought against Tsarnaev in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts during a bedside hearing while he was hospitalized. He was charged with use of a weapon of mass destruction and with malicious destruction of property resulting in death. with 23-hour-per-day lockdown. On July 10, 2013, Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty to 30 charges in his first public court appearance, including a murder charge for MIT police officer Sean Collier. He was back in court for a status hearing on September 23, and his lawyers requested more time to prepare their defense. On October 2, Tsarnaev's attorneys asked the court to lift the special administrative measures (SAMs) imposed by Attorney General Holder in August, saying that the measures had left Tsarnaev unduly isolated from communication with his family and lawyers, and that no evidence suggested that he posed a future threat. Trial and sentencing Jury selection began on January 5, 2015, and was completed on March 3, with a jury consisting of eight men and ten women (including six alternates). The trial began on March 4 with Assistant U.S. Attorney William Weinreb describing the bombing and painting Dzhokhar as "a soldier in a holy war against Americans" whose motive was "reaching paradise". He called the brothers equal participants. Defense attorney Judy Clarke admitted that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had placed the second bomb and was present at the murder of Sean Collier, the carjacking of Dun Meng, and the Watertown shootout, but she emphasized the influence that his older brother had on him, portraying him as a follower. Between March 4 and 30, prosecutors called more than 90 witnesses, including bombing survivors who described losing limbs in the attack, and the government rested its case on March 30. The defense rested as well on March 31, after calling four witnesses. Tsarnaev was found guilty on all 30 counts on April 8. The sentencing phase of the trial began on April 21, and a further verdict was reached on May 15 in which it was recommended that he be put to death. Tsarnaev was sentenced to death on June 24, after apologizing to the victims. In 2018, Tsarnaev's lawyers appealed on the grounds that a lower-court judge's refusal to move the case to another city not traumatized by the bombings deprived him of a fair trial. On July 30, 2020, Tsarnaev's death sentence was reversed by the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which found that, during jury selection, the District Court did not properly screen prospective jurors on how much they had heard of the case. The First Circuit vacated the death sentence and three of the other thirty convictions against Tsarnaev, and ordered a new penalty phase jury trial with fresh jurors, leaving the decision of a new change of venue to the District Court. Tsarnaev's remaining convictions still carried multiple life sentences, ensuring that he would remain in prison regardless of the results of the new trial. The United States government appealed this ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which granted certiorari in the case United States v. Tsarnaev in March 2021, which was argued before the Court on October 13, 2021. On March 4, 2022, the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the First Circuit and reinstated Tsarnaev's death penalty. == Motives and backgrounds of the Tsarnaev brothers ==

Motives According to FBI interrogators, Dzhokhar and his brother were motivated by extremist beliefs but "were not connected to any known terrorist groups", instead learning to build explosive weapons from an online magazine published by al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen. but ultimately decided to use remotely-activated pressure cooker bombs and other IEDs. Fox News reported that the brothers "chose the prestigious race as a 'target of opportunity' ... [after] the building of the bombs came together more quickly than expected". Dzhokhar said that he and his brother wanted to defend Islam from the U.S., accusing the U.S. of conducting the Iraq War and War in Afghanistan against Muslims. Some political science and public policy writers theorize that the primary motives might have been sympathy towards the political aspirations in the Caucasus region and Tamerlan's inability to become fully integrated into American society. According to the Los Angeles Times, a law enforcement official said that Dzhokhar "did not seem as bothered about America's role in the Muslim world" as his brother Tamerlan had been. Backgrounds , that belonged to a sister of the Tsarnaevs. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was born in 1986 in the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, North Caucasus, today a part of Russia. He had a history of violence, including an arrest in July 2009 for assaulting his girlfriend. Brendan Mess, Erik Weissman, and Raphael Teken were murdered in Mess's apartment. All had their throats slit from ear to ear with such great force that they were nearly decapitated. The local district attorney said that it appeared that the killer and the victims knew each other, and that the murders were not random. Tamerlan Tsarnaev had previously described murder victim Brendan Mess as his "best friend". Some analysts claim that the Tsarnaevs' mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is a radical extremist and supporter of jihad who influenced her sons' behavior. This prompted the Russian government to warn the U.S. government on two occasions about the family's behavior. Both Tamerlan and his mother were placed on a terrorism watch list about 18 months before the bombing took place. == Other arrests, detentions, and prosecutions ==

People detained and released On April 15, several people who were near the scene of the blast were taken into custody and questioned about the bombing, including a Saudi man whom police stopped as he was walking away from the explosion; they detained him when some of his responses made them uncomfortable. He graduated from high school in 2011 with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Tazhayakov was convicted of obstruction of justice and conspiracy on July 21, 2014. Kadyrbayev pleaded guilty to obstruction charges on August 22, 2014, but sentencing was delayed pending the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Yates v. United States. Kadyrbayev was sentenced to six years in prison in June 2015. He was deported to Kazakhstan in October 2018. Tazhayakov pleaded not guilty and went to trial, arguing that "Kadyrbayev was the mastermind behind destroying the evidence and that Tazhayakov only 'attempted obstruction'." Jurors returned a guilty verdict, however, and he was sentenced to 42 months ( years) in prison in June 2015. U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock gave a lighter sentence to Tazhayakov than to Kadyrbayev, who was viewed as more culpable. Phillipos was arrested and faced charges of knowingly making false statements to police. Phillipos faced a maximum sentence of eight years' imprisonment on each count. In June 2015, U.S. District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock sentenced him to three years in prison. Phillipos filed an appeal, but his sentence was upheld in court on February 28, 2017. Phillipos was released from prison in Philadelphia on February 26, 2018, and began serving a three-year probationary period. Ibragim Todashev On May 22, the FBI interrogated Ibragim Todashev in Orlando, Florida, who was a Chechen from Boston. The New York Times quoted an unnamed law enforcement official as saying that Todashev had confessed to a triple homicide, and had implicated Tsarnaev as well. During the interrogation, he was shot and killed by an FBI agent who claimed that Todashev attacked him. Todashev's father claimed his son was innocent and that federal investigators were biased against Chechens and made up their case against him. Khairullozhon Matanov Matanov was originally from Kyrgyzstan. He came to the U.S. in 2010 on a student visa, and later claimed asylum. He attended Quincy College for two years before dropping out to become a taxicab driver. He was living in Quincy, Massachusetts, at the time of his arrest, and was a friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. In March 2015, Matanov pleaded guilty to all four counts. In June 2015, he was sentenced to 30 months in prison. == Victims ==

Deaths Three people were killed as a direct result of the bombings. Krystle Marie Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from Medford, Massachusetts, was killed by the first bomb. and 8-year-old Martin William Richard from the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, were both killed by the second bomb. He died from multiple gunshot wounds. Injuries , where many of those wounded were treated About 281 civilians were treated at 27 local hospitals. which indicated that the devices were low to the ground. == Reactions ==

Law enforcement, local and national politicians, and various heads of state reacted quickly to the bombing, generally condemning the act and expressing sympathies for the victims. A week after the bombing, crowdfunding websites received more than 23,000 pledges promising more than $2 million for the victims, their families, and others affected by the bombing. In June, the Makeshift Memorial located in Copley Square was taken down and the memorial objects located there were moved to the archives in West Roxbury for cleaning, fumigation, and archiving. Five years after the bombing, The Boston Globe reported all of the items from the memorials were being housed in a climate controlled environment, free of charge, by the storage company, Iron Mountain in Northborough, Massachusetts. Some of the items are also being stored in Boston's city archives in West Roxbury. Boston University established a scholarship in honor of Lu Lingzi, a student who died in the bombing. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology established a scholarship, and erected a large abstract environmental sculpture outdoors called the Sean Collier Memorial, both in memory of slain MIT Police officer Sean Collier. The open-arched monolithic stone enclosure was proposed, designed, funded, fabricated, and installed on campus in less than two years after the bombing, and formally unveiled on April 29, 2015. One study conducted by the Institute for Public Service at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts, recorded the mental health and emotional response of various survivors, for three years following the bombing. In doing so, it reviewed the kinds of aid that were available in local hospitals and offered advice on how a person or community may be healed. This study also mentions that after recognizing the downgraded media coverage of people in the city being killed or injured on a daily basis, the city of Boston "applied for and received a grant from The Rockefeller Foundation to be part of their 100 resilient cities network and to develop a cross cutting resilience strategy". However, there was rising anti-Muslim sentiment online and locally in the weeks following the bombing, causing distress in the local Muslim community and making some afraid to leave their homes. Three stone pillars lit by abstract sculptural bronze lighting columns memorializing three victims were installed at the two separate bombing sites on August 19, 2019. National reactions President Barack Obama addressed the nation after the attack. Islamic organizations in the United States condemned the attacks. International reactions , Italy The bombing was denounced and condolences were offered by many international leaders as well as leading figures from international sport. Security measures were increased worldwide in the wake of the attack. Chris Buckley of The New York Times said "Ms. Lu's death gave a melancholy face to the attraction that America and its colleges exert over many young Chinese." David Cameron (then-prime minister of the United Kingdom) posted on Twitter, "The scenes from Boston are shocking and horrific – my thoughts are with all those who have been affected." On May 14, he visited Boston as part of a three-day visit to the United States. In Boston, he met with Governor Patrick at the Massachusetts State House, offering condolences and holding a discussion with Patrick about what lessons governments could learn from the bombings. Afterwards, he and Patrick visited the temporary memorials at Copley Square, where Cameron remarked to reporters, "Everyone in the UK stands with [Boston] and [its] great people." Russian reaction The Russian government said that special attention would be paid to security at upcoming international sports events in Russia, including the 2014 Winter Olympics. Moreover Russian authorities and mass media since the spring of 2014 blame the United States for politically motivated false information about the lack of response from Russian authorities after subsequent U.S. requests. As proof a letter from the Russian FSB was shown to the members of an official U.S. Congressional delegation to Moscow during their visit. This letter with information about Tsarnaev (including his biography details, connections and phone number) had been sent from the FSB to the FBI and CIA during March 2011. Republican U.S. senators Saxby Chambliss and Richard Burr reported that Russian authorities had separately asked both the FBI (at least twice: during March and November 2011) and the CIA (September 2011) to look carefully into Tamerlan Tsarnaev and provide more information about him back to Russia. FSB secretly recorded phone conversations between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother (they vaguely and indirectly discussed jihad) and sent these to the FBI as evidence of possible extremist links within the family. However, while Russia offered US intelligence services warnings that Tsarnaev planned to link up with extremist groups abroad, an FBI investigation yielded no evidence to support those claims at the time. In addition, subsequent U.S. requests for additional information about Tsarnaev went unanswered by the Russians. Chechen reactions On April 19, 2013, the press secretary of the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, issued a statement that, inter alia, read: "The Boston bombing suspects have nothing to do with Chechnya". The National Lawyers Guild and some news outlets questioned the constitutionality of the door-to-door searches conducted by law enforcement officers looking for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. One Boston Day On the second anniversary of the Boston Marathon Bombings, Mayor Marty Walsh established April 15, the day of the bombings, as an official and permanent holiday called "One Boston Day", dedicated to conducting random acts of kindness and helping others out. Over the past eleven years, some examples of acts of kindness being done have been donating blood to the American Red Cross, donating food to the Greater Boston Food Bank, opening free admission in places like the Museum of Science and Museum of Fine Arts, donating shoes to homeless shelters, and donating to military and veteran charities. Conspiracy theories A number of conspiracy theories arose in the immediate wake of the attacks and after more information about the Tsarnaev brothers came to light. This can be common in the aftermath of acts of domestic terrorism, especially the September 11 attacks. Stella Tremblay, then a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives from Auburn, New Hampshire, claimed the Boston Marathon bombing was a government conspiracy and that victims who lost their legs were faking their injuries because they were not "screaming in agony." Under pressure afterwards she resigned. The New Hampshire House then unanimously passed a resolution to show support for the victims and to disavow unfounded speculation or accusations. In the days following the attacks, some conspiracy theories arose on the internet claiming they were false flag attacks committed by the United States government. As more information about the backgrounds of the Tsarnaev brothers came to light, further conspiracy theories were disseminated. One claim, made by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's defense attorney as well as some journalists, was that the FBI had tried to recruit Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an FBI informant in 2011. The FBI is not required to release information on informants, and classified information on sources of intelligence constitutes an exception to the 25-year declassification window established by Executive Order 13526. In 2011, a triple murder took place in Waltham, Massachusetts, in which a friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev was one of the victims. After the 2013 attacks, the investigation was reopened with Tamerlan Tsarnaev as a new suspect. The failure of the 2011 investigation to identify Tamerlan Tsarnaev as a major suspect led to claims among conspiracy theorists that the investigation of the 2011 triple murder had been suppressed by the FBI in order to maintain Tsarnaev's informant status. Theorists also cite the fact that the FBI has been criticized for an alleged practice under former director James Comey of encouraging confidential informants to attempt terrorist attacks. This alleged practice, combined with disputed claims of connections between the Tsarnaev brothers and intelligence services, have given rise to a conspiracy theory that the United States government had foreknowledge of the Tsarnaev brothers' plans to commit a terrorist attack, or that the attack was made at the direction of intelligence services. This claim also formed an element of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's legal defense. No evidence or further claims supporting this theory have been confirmed by any US government agencies. == Conflicting reports ==

On the afternoon of the bombing, the New York Post reported that a suspect, a Saudi Arabian male, was under guard and being questioned at a Boston hospital. On April 17, the FBI released the following statement: The decision to release the photos of the Tsarnaev brothers was made in part to limit damage done to those misidentified on the Internet and by the media, and to address concerns over maintaining control of the manhunt. == See also ==