Sergeant suspended for leaking Boston bombing suspect’s arrest photos

A Massachusetts State Police photographer has been suspended after leaking previously unseen photos of the night Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested.

One of the 13 photos leaked to Boston Magazine by Sgt. Sean Murphy shows Tsarnaev emerging bloodied from a boat in Watertown, Massachusetts.

In another photo, a sniper’s red laser target on Tsarnaev’s forehead is clearly seen as he is surrendering to the police.

In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Murphy said he was suspended from his job pending a review next week.

“Today’s dissemination to Boston Magazine of photographs of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and police activity related to his capture was not authorized by the Massachusetts State Police. The department will not release the photographs to media outlets,” said a police spokesperson.

According to Boston Magazine, Murphy leaked the photos in response to a photograph of Dzhokhar published by Rolling Stone magazine on its August cover, which, according to critics, is a glamorous and stylized portrait of Dzhokhar.

In a shootout on April 19, police killed Dzhokhar’s elder brother, Tamerlan, and later that day arrested Dzhokhar.

Initially, authorities claimed they had exchanged gunfire with Dzhokhar during his arrest and that he had shot himself in the throat in a bungled suicide attempt. However, later authorities admitted that Dzhokhar was not armed when police took him into custody.

Last month, federal prosecutors in the US filed a 30-count indictment against Dzhokhar which stated he and his brother, Tamerlan, had designed two bombs to “shred skin, shatter bone and cause extreme pain and suffering, as well as death.”

Charges against Dzhokhar included the use of a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death.

The April 15 twin bombings at the Boston Marathon killed 3 people and injured over 260 others.

Initial investigations into the bombings showed that the explosive devices used in the bombings were pressure cookers filled with nails, pellets, and gunpowder left in a backpack.

Meanwhile, investigative reporter Ralph Lopez of The Digital Journal revealed in May that the image released by the FBI as evidence that Dzhokhar arrived at the scene of the Boston bombings with a backpack but left without it was made with a computer software such as Photoshop.

Also in May, the father of Ibragim Todashev, a friend of Tamerlan who was killed by an FBI agent while being questioned about the Boston Marathon bombings, revealed photos of his son’s body taken by Ibragim’s friends after the FBI handed the body to them.

The photos showed Todashev was shot seven times, once in the crown of his head.