Carnage at the Bombed-Marathon in Boston. |
Police
took a 20-year-old Saudi national into custody near the scene of yesterday’s
horrific Boston Marathon bomb attack, law-enforcement sources told The Post.
The
potential suspect was questioned by the FBI and local police yesterday at
Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he was under heavy guard while
being treated for shrapnel injuries to his leg sustained in the blast.
In late afternoon, a large group of federal and state law
enforcement agents raided an apartment in a building in the Saudi man’s
hometown of Revere, Mass.
FBI agents could be seen through one window. It was not
clear what, if anything, they found. But Revere fire officials said they were
called out to support bomb-squad officers as part of an investigation of a
“person of interest” in the marathon attack.
At the hospital, investigators seized the man’s clothes
to examine whether they held any evidence that he was behind the attack. The
law-enforcement sources also told The Post that the man was not free to leave
the medical center. He had suffered shrapnel wounds to the back of a leg but
was not likely to die, a source said.
As of last
night, investigators had not yet directly asked the man whether he had set off
the bombs. But they had asked him general questions, such as what he was doing
in the area.
The potential suspect told police he had dinner Sunday
night near Boston’s Prudential Center, about half a mile from the blast site,
the sources said. He also said that he went to the Copley Square area yesterday
to witness the finish of the race.
The sources said that, after the man was grabbed by
police, he smelled of gunpowder and declared, “I thought there would be a
second bomb.” He also asked: “Did anyone die?”
FBI agents searching the Saudi suspect's apartment. |
Officials
showed up at the Revere apartment at about 5:30 p.m. in unmarked vehicles, a
resident of the building said. It’s on a street where the man had lived, law-enforcement
sources told The Post.
About an hour later, more vehicles, carrying agents of
the FBI, Homeland Security and ATF also descended on the site, along with
firefighters and a bomb squad. They searched an apartment on the fifth floor.
By midnight, most of the authorities had left the
complex, which sits on a piece of ocean-front property in the seaside city. Investigators
were looking for anything that might have been used set to off the devices,
including a remote control.
According
to a report by CBS News, the man was initially tackled by a bystander while
running from the scene of the explosions. The bystander told police he grabbed
the Saudi because he thought he was acting suspiciously.
Bombing-Suspect Saudi student Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi in FBI custody. |