Chidanand RajghattaChidanand Rajghatta, TNN THE TIMES OF INDIA
WASHINGTON: Cornered in a boat after gun battles with police had left him injured and bloodied, the teenage brother of a radicalized Chechen who was killed in firefight with Boston police was captured alive on Friday. The finale, which ended the four-day drama that began with the bombing of the Boston Marathon on Monday, allegedly by the Chechen brothers, raised the possibility that US authorities may be able to unravel fully and clearly the motive behind the first successful foreign-inspired terrorist attack on mainland America after 9/11.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was found hiding in a dry-docked boat in the Boston suburb of Watertown, not far from where he and his brother engaged police in pitched battles after a car chase on Thursday. A resident who had been cooped up at home all day following a government initiated lockdown during the manhunt reportedly went out for a smoke, and found a trail of bloodstains leading to his tarp-covered boat.
He reeled back to call the police, who used thermal imaging to determine a wounded person was hiding under the tarp. He was then captured or coaxed into surrendering after a two-hour exercise during which police disoriented him with various tactics including smoke and stun grenades.
Minutes later, Boston mayor Tom Menino tweeted, “We got him!” The Boston police department also took to the much-maligned social media, tweeting, “CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won.” Area residents, and indeed much of Boston, which has been under an unprecedented lockdown for much of the day during the manhunt, flooded the streets. They cheered the cops and chants of “USA!USA!” broke out in some places in an unscripted moment of exuberant nationalism.
The concern in many quarters is whether the episode will fire up xenophobia and immigrant-bashing, some of it already evident during the manhunt, after it emerged the perpetrators of the Boston marathon bombing were foreigners, or at least foreign-looking. Already, there are calls for greater deliberation on the immigration reform legislation now in its final stages in Congress.
Cornered in a boat after gun battles with police had left him injured and bloodied, the teenage brother of a radicalized Chechen who was killed in firefight with Boston police was captured alive on Friday. The finale, which ended the four-day drama that began with the bombing of the Boston Marathon on Monday, allegedly by the Chechen brothers, raised the possibility that US authorities may be able to unravel fully and clearly the motive behind the first successful foreign-inspired terrorist attack on mainland America after 9/11.
What exactly does the US media mean by ‘foreign’ looking? After all, every American other than the native Americans are ‘foreign’?
Since all of them have originally at some point in time (between 200 to 300 years), come from ‘foreign’ lands for a variety of reasons.