Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev remains in serious condition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston where he is receiving treatment for throat and tongue injuries believed to have been suffered during an early Friday Morning gunfight with police and FBI officers.
Once Tsarnaev is able to speak, he will be questioned by the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), a coalition formed through a 2009 Executive Order, of experienced interrogators from across law enforcement, intelligence, and national security agencies. The group has been assembled 14 times over the past two years, according to FBI Director Robert Mueller.
“In a case like this first and foremost is the medical condition, he’s got to be lucid, cleared by doctors, and then the interview will start,” said Robert McFadden, former deputy assistant director of counterintelligence operations with the Naval Criminal Investigative Services (NCIS).
McFadden, who was part of the advisory panel that proposed what would become the HIG said that, before discussing other possible terrorist plots, interrogators must build “a degree of rapport and accord,” with the suspect. Ideally, investigators will facilitate this process by creating as big a dossier as possible on the detainee, a logistical challenge in a case where the suspect’s name has been known for only a matter of days. In a controversial move, the government has invoked the “public safety exception” to avoid reading Tsarnaev his Miranda Rights out of fear that more accomplices, or explosives, may still be at large.
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