Rock legends play for Boston victims as bomb suspect’s mother speaks

 
Bo Wilson31 May 2013

Stars of rock and pop sang the Beatles’ Come Together at the climax of an emotional benefit concert for victims of the Boston Marathon bombing.

The gig was kicked off by veteran band Boston, and featured more than a dozen acts including New Kids On The Block, Aerosmith, James Taylor and Boyz II Men in a five-and-a-half- hour show.

Thousands of people, including those injured in the blast and emergency workers, packed the T D Garden.

Boston lead singer Tommy DeCarlo declared: “Tonight, we are all Boston.” Aerosmith frontman Steve Tyler said: “Boston got its heart broken … but if they think they can keep us down, they can Dream On” — before the band played their hit by that name. Cash raised will go to One Fund Boston, helping victims of the blast during the April 15 marathon, which killed three people and injured more than 260.

The mother of the surviving suspect has spoken from Russia saying her son has recovered enough to walk and has told his parents he and his brother were innocent. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is in prison hospital after being injured during his capture. His brother Tamerlan, 26, died in a gunfight with police.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told Associated Press her son was getting better, but struggling to understand what happened: “He didn’t hold back his emotions ... as if he were screaming to the whole world, ‘What is this? What’s happening?’ He was being driven crazy by the unfairness that happened to us, that they killed our innocent Tamerlan.”

She spoke from the family home in Makhachkala, in Dagestan province. Father Anzor Tsarnaev said: “All I can do is pray ... we will get Dzhokhar back, crippled, but at least alive.”

A judge in Chicago has jailed a Lebanese migrant for 23 years for placing a backpack he thought contained a bomb near Wrigley Field baseball stadium in the city. Sami Samir Hassoun, 25, admitted the 2010 offence. FBI agents gave him the bag in a sting operation.

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