Boston bombing suspect was unarmed when shot by police, despite early claims

US authorities have admitted that the second Boston Marathon bombing suspect shot and severely injured by police gunfire just before his arrest was unarmed, disputing earlier official claims that he was heavily armed and fired shots from the boat in which he was hiding.

Accused bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, “had no firearms” when he came under a barrage of police gunfire, despite statements by police officials following his capture that “he had fired from the boat” and that he was “captured with several weapons,” The Washington Post reported Thursday citing “multiple federal law enforcement officials.”

There were also reports that the gunshot wound the 19-year-old suspect suffered to his throat may have been “an attempt to kill himself as police moved in,” the report adds.

Moreover, despite claims by the US authorities that they “were desperate to capture” Tsarnaev to question him, the FBI has refused to explain what prompted the massive police gunfire, which has now been blamed for striking and injuring a police officer, in spite of earlier suggestions that he was shot by the suspect during a gunfire exchange with police, according to the daily.

Justifying the shooting of the unarmed suspect, however, another law enforcement official is quoted as saying, “You can’t second-guess what they were doing on that scene. Their own lives were in danger.”

Other local press reports have described the scene of police shooting just before Tsarnaev’s capture as “a war zone,” citing residents of nearby houses who witnessed the unfolding events out of their home windows.

The development comes as a US state lawmaker recently blamed the American government for the Boston Marathon bombings, describing it as a “Black Ops terrorist attack.”

Republican New Hampshire state legislator Stella Tremblay said on April 19 that the twin bombings in Boston, which killed three and wounded over 250 individuals, and the subsequent hunt for suspects was a plot by the US federal government.

Describing the official account of the events surrounding the twin bombings as suspicious, Tremblay accused the Obama administration of bombarding innocent people with “drone and now terrorist attacks.”

“Sad day, but a wake up to all of us,” she added.

“One suspect killed, the other one will be too before they even have a chance to speak…First there was a suspect then there wasn’t,” said Tremblay.

Meanwhile, Tsarnaev continues to be treated at a Boston hospital, where his condition has been upgraded from critical to fair. He began communicating in writing and some speech with a special team of FBI interrogators Saturday night and was officially charged on Monday while on a hospital bed.

This while the US Vice President Joe Biden denounced Tsarnaev and his dead brother as “two twisted, perverted, cowardly knockoff jihadis” at a Wednesday event honoring an MIT Campus police officer killed during a reported gunfire exchange with the bombing suspects.

The Islamophobic rhetoric used by the top American official reflects the highly prejudiced attitude of senior American authorities in their continuing efforts to investigate the terrorist bombings at the Boston Marathon.