US bomb suspect in hospital move

The US Marshals Service said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre overnight and was taken to the Federal Medical Centre Devens about 40 miles west of Boston.

The facility, on the decommissioned Fort Devens US Army base, treats federal prisoners and detainees who require specialised long-term medical or mental health care.

The 19-year-old Tsarnaev is recovering from a gunshot wound to the throat and other injuries suffered during his attempted getaway.

The Massachusetts college student was charged with setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs that killed three people and wounded more than 260 at the marathon finish line on April 15.

Earlier, officials said the suspects were headed for New York’s Times Square to blow up the rest of their explosives, in what they portrayed as a chilling, spur-of-the-moment scheme that fell apart when the brothers realised the car they had hijacked was low on fuel.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said: “We don’t know if we would have been able to stop the terrorists had they arrived here from Boston. We’re just thankful that we didn’t have to find out that answer.”

Christina DiIorio-Sterling, a spokeswoman for US Attorney Carmen Ortiz in Boston, would not comment on whether authorities plan to add charges based on alleged plan to attack New York.

The Middlesex County district attorney’s office is also building a murder case against the surviving Tsarnaev for the death of Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier three days after the bombings.

Investigators and politicians briefed by the FBI have said that the Tsarnaev brothers – ethnic Chechens from Russia who had lived in the US for about a decade – were motivated by anger over wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.