No place to bury dead Boston bombing suspect

Sheikh Abu Omar Almubarac, a prominent member of the Denver-area Muslim community, prays at his home and office in Aurora, Colorado, Tuesday May 7, 2013. Officials with Colorado’s largest mosque on Tuesday repudiated Almubarac’s offer to bury suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a Denver-area cemetery, saying it’s the obligation of the man’s family or Muslims in Boston to decide where he is buried, not an organization a thousand miles away. AP/BRENNAN LINSLEY

BOSTON—A police spokesman in Worcester in the US state of Massachusetts says the department has been reluctantly dragged into the efforts to find a burial plot for dead Boston Marathon suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

He says a deal for the state prisons department to take the body has fallen through.

Sgt. Kerry Hazelhurst said Wednesday a deal to bury the body at a prison site was reached on Monday, then “dissolved” on Tuesday. He said efforts to contact state officials since then have gone unanswered.

State corrections officials did not immediately return a message.

Hazelhurst says Worcester police are wasting precious resources providing security at the funeral parlor where the body is being kept. He said sending the body to Russia is “not an option.”

Hazelhurst said: “We are not barbarians. We bury the dead.” Bridget Murphy