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Boston bombings suspect teenager Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was being treated in a city hospital with multiple injuries including gunshots, is out of danger, a US lawmaker familiar with his health situation has said.
"He is certainly out of danger. He certainly was able to communicate. He had an operation, some kind of surgical procedure in the middle of his interrogation and he's doing fairly well," Congressman Peter King told the CNN yesterday.
The New York lawmaker, who sits on both the Homeland Security and Intelligence Committees of the House of Representatives which have been briefed multiple times by investigative authorities, said that the FBI is also looking at other persons of interests in the case.
In addition to 19-year-old Dzhokhar, who has been charged with conspiracy to use of weapons of mass destruction, the FBI has named his elder brother Tamerlan, 29, as the main suspect. He died in a police shootout soon after the blasts.
Nearly 27,000 people were participating in the marathon, a popular running event that is held annually on the third Monday of April, when two blasts hit the cheering crowd, killing killed three persons and wounding over 200.
"There is no doubt there are certain people that are being looked at very carefully, very closely," King said, adding that the police has questioned the wife of Tamerlan.
Responding to a question on Russia intercept between Tamerlan and his mother on their alleged jihadi conversation, King said there's no doubt that there was communication involving the mother where she made it clear that she thought her son was a confirmed jihadist or certainly a confirmed Islamist radical who would be willing to die or certainly who was willing to carry out whatever he was asked to do.
"That at least is the tone and the thrust of the communication. Now, exactly what form of communication it is, I don't know if I'm really at liberty to say that. The fact is no doubt that the mother made statement like this or had indicated this.
"The Russians are aware of it, and the Russians did not give it to the FBI back in 2011. If they had, I think it definitely would have changed the whole tone of the investigation and it well could have led to a very different result," King said.
