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Boston bombings suspect moved to same prison as Rajaratnam

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Bloomberg Philadelphia/Boston
Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was moved from a Boston hospital to the federal medical prison in Massachusetts where former hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam is serving an 11 year-sentence for insider trading.

Tsarnaev, 19, was transferred to Federal Medical Center Devens, on the site of a decommissioned military base 63 km west of Boston, the US Marshals Service said today in a statement.

Tsarnaev, who was apprehended April 19 after a four-day manhunt that paralysed Boston, is charged with using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction in the double bombing that killed three people and injured more than 200 near the finish line of the storied road race. He may face the death penalty if convicted.
 
He had been recovering from wounds at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he told investigators that he and his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev acted alone after finding bomb-making information on the Internet. Tamerlan, 26, died trying to elude capture.

Devens houses about 1,000 male offenders requiring specialised or long-term medical care, according the Federal Bureau of Prisons website and John Colautti, a spokesman for the centre. It's designated as an administrative facility, which means it houses inmates of different security classifications, from white-collar criminals such as Rajaratnam to mobsters and sex offenders.

In addition to the medical centre, Devens includes a minimum-security prison camp that holds about 124 inmates, Colautti said in a phone interview.

Tsarnaev is being held in an area of single cells each containing a sink, toilet and bed, Colautti said. Each unit is equipped with a solid steel door, which has an observation window and a food slot, Colautti said. Medical providers make periodic rounds, Colautti said.

Rajaratnam, co-founder of Galleon Group LLC, was convicted by a Manhattan federal jury in 2011 of directing the biggest hedge fund insider-trading scheme in US history.

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First Published: Apr 27 2013 | 12:31 AM IST

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