Nation & world briefing
Police arrest two sniper suspects
Daniel Chang, Shannon
McCaffrey and Martin Merzer J |
Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)
ROCKVILLE, Md. — Police de
clared the Washington-area sniper
murders solved Thursday, In custody
was a veteran of the Persian {UtlfWar
and a teenage companion who au
thorities say has been implicated in a
deadly robbery.
Police said a rifle ftmnd in their ear
matched the murder weapon.
Neither man had been charged in
the killings as of Thursday evening,
and their alleged motive remained
unclear. But acquaintances said both
men sometimes expressed anti
American sentiments, and whatever
the motive, police believe the sus- |
pects shot 13 people — innocent
men. women and a 13-year-old boy
-“from a distance and then ran. Ten
of them died.
Police said a trail of tips and clues
that stretched from the Washington,
1 ).C., area t<) Alabama and Washington
state led a federal SWAT team to a blue
1990Chevrolet Caprice. It was parked
at a rest stop off Interstate 70 in Fred
erick County, Md., about 50 miles
northwest of the nation’s capital.
Inside the car, police found John
Allen Muhammad, 41, who changed
his name from John Allen Williams
when he converted to Islam, and
John Lee Malvo, 17, a Jamaican na
*tive who apparently is not Muham
mad’s stepson, despite previous re
ports that he is.
The two were asleep. Officers cap
'' vs j £j
tured them without additional vio
lence. It was 3:19 a.m. EDT.
A search of the Chevy Caprice
produced a rifle th«*fc ballistics tests
later concluded was the same
weapon employed during the three
week reign of terror, a federal agent
said. Officers also found a sighting
scope and a tripod.
The car reportedly was modified
* so asbooter eouldlie on the back seat
and fire out of the trunk. That, ex
perts said, could explain why no shell
casings were found at most of the
shooting sites.
1 * ■ 1 ” ■ !*••''£ f I
Ludlow, Ky, who spotted the car at
said he called p< >
lice and was told to stay in his vehicle
and keep an eye on the suspects.
“I’m no hero, get me right,” he said
in a radio interview. “I think I did a
real good deed and may have saved a
lot of people’s lives.”
By Thursday evening, Muhammad
and Malvo had not been formally
charged with the crimes, but authori
ties said they were certain they had
their men. Prosecutors were sched
uled to meet Friday to discuss
charges and work out jurisdictional
and other issues.
© 2002, Knight Ridder/tribune
Information Serv ices. Knight Ridder
correspondents Tim Johnson, Carol
Rosenberg, Sumana Chatterjee, Tony
Pugh, Dave Montgomery, Frank
Kummer, Dwight Ott, Jake Wagman,
Karl Fischer, John Simerman and Kristi
Heim contributed to this report.
f i% r
Alex Rodriguez
Chicago Tribune (KRT)
MOSCOW — Heavily armed
Chechens holding about 700 people
hostage at a Moscow theater released
the body of a woman they had shot
to death and fired grenades Thurs
day at two other captives who es
caped, ratcheting up tensions with
the Russian government.
Even as attempts at negotiations
lurched, the rebels threatened to
kill 10 people each hour if their de
mand for an end to the 3-year-old
war in Chechnya was not met, said
two reporters for an Italian news
agency who were released from
captivity Thursday.
Hundreds of heavily armed Russ
ian troops, police officers and special
forces soldiers encircled the theater.
Inside the main hall, nerves began to
fray, a hostage said by cell phone.
The Chechens refused police offers
of food but were providing hostages
with water and chocolate. At least
three of the hostages are Americans.
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ichens, who seized th«
night during a
ance of one of Moscow’s
most popular musicals, gave Russia
a seven-day deadline to pull out of
if Chechnya, according to a pro-rebel
Web site, kavkaz.org.
Russian President Madimir Putin
broke his public silence about the
crisis, saying the Russian govern
ment would exercise “maximum
safety” in working for the release of
;es; At the same time, he
: to give into the group’s
“provocations” and said the raid was
llfjllbt of international terrorism
terrorism centers.”
A spokesman for Aslan
Maskhadov, who was the Chechen
president when Russian troops
stormed back into the territory in
October 1999, said his government
was not responsible for the
planned by
overseas
hostage-taking.
Public support has been flagging
t has ground down
of hit-and
ins on civilian
by the Russian army that even pro
Moscow Chechens deem abusive.
© 2002, Chicago Tribune.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune
Information Services.
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