REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BOSTON - The ethnic Chechen college student suspected with his deceased older brother in the Boston Marathon bombing faced federal charges as early as Monday as he lay hospitalized under armed guard, severely wounded and unable to speak.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (19 years) was captured with throat injuries that, coupled with sedatives administered at the Boston hospital where he is being treated, had left him incapable of speech and initially prevented authorities from questioning him. 

Late on Sunday, media reported he was awake and responding in writing to questions at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. But Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told CNN he could not confirm that. "We're very anxious to talk to him and the investigators will be doing that as soon as possible," Davis said.

Tsarnaev's capture on Friday night ended a manhunt that virtually shut down greater Boston for some 20 hours. His older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was pronounced dead after a gunfight with police a day earlier.

Investigators are seeking, among things, to determine whether the two suspects acted alone. Boston's police commissioner and mayor have both said they believed the brothers were on their own.

"I am confident that they were the two major actors in the violence that occurred," Davis told CNN on Sunday.

Davis also said investigators have discovered at least four undetonated devices, one of them similar to the two pressure cooker bombs set off at the Boston Marathon, and that he believed the suspects were planning additional attacks.

Still, much of investigators' attention has focused on a trip to Russia last year by Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and whether he became involved with or was influenced by Chechen separatists. The brothers emigrated to the United States a decade ago from Dagestan.

They are accused of planting and setting off two homemade bombs near the crowded finish line of the Boston Marathon last Monday, killing three people and injuring more than 170 others. US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, the federal prosecutor for the Boston area, was preparing criminal charges against the younger Tsarnaev, a naturalized US citizen, according to Davis. It was not clear when charges would be filed, but it could as early as Monday.

The men's parents, who moved back to southern Russia some time ago, have said their sons were framed.

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