Boston Marathon Bomber Hospital Notes Released As Part Of Appeal

BOSTON, MA — Five years ago Boston was turned upside down following the Boston Marathon bombings. The bombs killed three people, including a child, and injured hundreds more, setting off a manhunt in the Greater Boston area. The hunt lasted days and ended with another officer shot, one of the brothers involved in the boming killed in a shootout and the other wounded in a boat in Watertown.

Monday, newly released court documents offered a previously unseen window into what happened the days following the capture of the surviving Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, then 19.

After he captured on April 19, he was interrogated from his hospital bed where, unable to talk because of gunshot wounds to his head, face and throat, he wrote his responses to federal agents in a spiral-bound notebook.

Documents filed in federal court this week as part of his appeal include 79 pages of notes he wrote from his hospital room at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in the two days following his capture. He was charged with the bombing on April 22.

Tsarnaev repeatedly asks his interrogators if he can rest, and for a lawyer. "Lawyer. Human rights," he wrote. "Please let me rest."

He asks multiple times about his brother, writing "Where is my bro?" and, "do you have my bro?"

He wrote, and circled, "Is my brother alive?"

He told investigators that he and his brother acted alone. He also wrote about the American presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“American is at war is it not? I did what is necessary. My people are dying,’’ he wrote. “We're at war my friend ... Where are your troops? Are you not killing innocent people in Afghan, Iraq?”

He wrote that both he and his brother expected to die as a result of the attack.

Tsarnaev, now 25, is incarcerated at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2015.

On the last page:

Read the notes here:

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Photos courtesy FBI