Boston Marathon fund to share $61m among bombing victims
One Fund Boston to give financial aid to 232 victims, including payments of $2.2m to the families of the four people killed
Email
Thousands gather at the memorial on Boylston Street for a moment of silence a week after the bombing. Photograph: Nicolaus Czarnecki/Metro/Zuma/Corbis
Nearly $61 million will be distributed to victims of the Boston Marathon bombings starting on Sunday.
The One Fund Boston, a non-profit created to support victims of the April 15 attack, said 232 victims will receive payments. This includes a maximum of nearly $2.2m to the families of the four people killed in the attacks.
Boston mayor Tom Menino and Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick established the fund the day after two bombs exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three people were killed and more than 260 people were injured in the bombing. Police officer Sean Collier was also killed during a manhunt for the brothers suspected of detonating the bombs.
The father of 29-year-old Krystle Campbell, who died in the attack, began to cry when he learned his family would be receiving $2.2m, according to the Boston Globe.
"It's really overwhelming," said William Campbell Jr, who expected to receive less than half that amount. Campbell said he and his wife will use the money to help other victims and remodel their home so their son and grandson can move in. He said the money won't undo the pain caused by his daughter's death.
"I'd rather have my daughter back than get a dollar," Campbell said. "She was everything in the world to me."
The One Fund Boston will continue to accept donations to support victims. Millions of dollars have also been raised through other funds andcharities.
Victims had to file claims to receive payments from the fund, and 26 people were rejected because their injuries were not treated at a local hospital. The last bombing victim to leave the hospital was discharged earlier this month, seven weeks after the attack.
Two double amputees will also receive $2.2m from the fund and 14 other people who lost one limb will each receive nearly $1.2m. Sixty-nine people who were hospitalized for one or more nights will receive between $125,000 and $948,300. The rest of the 143 eligible claimants who were physically injured, but did not have an overnight hospital stay, will receive $8,000 each.
"No amount of money can replace what has been lost," said attorney Kenneth Feinberg, an administrator for the fund. "It was a solemn responsibility to allocate these finite contributions across tremendous pain and suffering, but it was made lighter by the unprecedented generosity of Bostonians, of Americans, and of people around the world."
Feinberg, who was raised just south of Boston, has administered the distribution of funds to disaster victims many times in the past two decades. He was part of a large effort to compensate victims of 9/11 and helped allocate funds to those affected by the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, and at Virginia Tech.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/27/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-boston-bombing-indictment
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev felt compelled to attack US, Boston charge sheet alleges
Indictment against Boston bombing suspect lays out 30 charges and suggests he was partly responsible for brother's death
The indictment alleges that the brothers prepared themselves assiduously for their attack on the 117th Boston Marathon. Photograph: Reuters
The surviving suspect of the Boston Marathon bombing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, scrawled messages inside the boat where he was hiding shortly before he was captured in which he said that he disliked killing innocent people but felt compelled to do so because of US attacks on Muslims, his indictment has revealed.
A grand jury indictment, unsealed on Thursday, also confirms earlier police reports that he was at least partially responsible for the death of his older brother, Tamerlan.
The 74-page indictment against Tsarnaev charges the 19-year-old with killing three people in the Boston Marathon bombings on 15 April and with the later murder of a police officer. The document includes a wealth of new detail about the alleged actions leading up to the bombings and ensuing confrontation with police.
It suggests that as the younger Tsarnaev was lying bleeding in the boat, three days after the marathon bombings, he felt a need to explain his actions in writing. "Now I don't like killing innocent people it is forbidden in Islam," Tsarnaev wrote on an inside wall and beams of the drydocked boat in Watertown, a suburb of Boston where he was holed up on 19 April following a firefight with police. Then he added: "but due to said [unintelligible] it is allowed".
He added: "The US government is killing our innocent civilians. I can't stand to see such evil go unpunished". He also said: "Stop killing innocent people and we will stop."
Tsarnaev is accused of having detonated the second marathon bomb fashioned out of a pressure cooker packed with explosive powder drawn from fireworks and shrapnel. He allegedly carried the device in a black backpack and placed it in front of Marathon Sports on Boylston Street near the finishing line of the race.
The blast, at about 2.49pm on 15 April, killed Lingzi Lu, 23, and Martin Richard, eight, as well as maiming and seriously injuring many others. The bomb was set off only seconds after the first device was detonated by Tamerlan Tsarnaev killing Krystle Campbell, 29, the indictment says.
One of the mysteries surrounding the Boston bombing is how a sociable, fun-loving teenager like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was a popular student at University of Massachusetts at Darmouth, became sufficiently radicalised to carry out such brutal outrages. The indictment contains new allegations about extremist literature that he downloaded onto his computer shortly before the attacks.
He is said to have downloaded an e-book called The Slicing Sword: Against the One Who Forms Allegiances with the Disbelievers and Takes Them as Supporters Instead of Allah, His Messenger and the Believers. The book carries a foreword by Anwar al-Awlaki, the American citizen and prominent member of al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula (Aqap) who was killed in his Yemeni hideout in 2011 by a US drone.
Tsarnaev also downloaded Defense of the Muslim Lands, the First Obligation After Imam by Abdullah Azzam, who the indictment labels the "father of global jihad". Tsarnaev, then 18, also dipped into an extremist web forum called At-Tibyan publications to retrieve a book about jihad that glorified martyrdom.
The final download mentioned by the indictment was the first volume of Aqap's magazine, Inspire, which contains instructions on how to build a pressure-cooker bomb.
The indictment alleges that the brothers prepared themselves assiduously for their attack on the 117th Boston Marathon. In February Tamerlan travelled to Phantom Fireworks in Seabrook, New Hampshire, to buy 48 mortars containing 8lb of low-grade explosive powder.
The following month the brothers engaged in an hour's target practice at a firing range in Manchester, New Hampshire. Ten days before the marathon, Tamerlan made online purchases of electronic parts for use assembling the bombs, and on 14 April Dzhokhar opened up a pre-paid cell phone account under the name Jahar Tsarni.
After the FBI had identified them as suspects and released their photographs to the public on 18 April, the indictment says the brothers armed themselves with five further bombs, a Ruger P95 semi-automatic handgun and ammunition, a machete and hunting knife. They drove in their own car to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where at about 10.25pm they allegedly shot a campus police officer, Sean Collier, in the head at close range.
Later they hijacked a Mercedes and drove it to Watertown, where the gunfight with police occurred. Shortly after midnight, three local police officers were struggling to constrain Tamerlan Tsarnaev and put him into handcuffs when Dzhokhar drove the Mercedes straight at them.
The indictment says the younger brother just missed one of the officers, who at the time was trying to drag the older Tsarnaev to safety. "Then Dzhokhar A Tsarnaev ran over Tamerlan Tsarnaev, seriously injuring him and contributing to his death."
Tamerlan died in hospital later that morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment