Residents of Boston and its surrounding communities were asked to stay home and keep their doors locked as hundreds of heavily-armed police and federal officers swarmed the area.
Government officials, labor activists, manufacturers and retailers all called for improved safety standards after a November garment factory fire in the same suburb, when locked emergency exits trapped hundreds of workers inside and 112 people died.
Yet the laws that prohibit free debate of the Kurdish issue and the role of Islam in politics, under which hundreds of politicians and writers have been locked up, remain in place.
They had been killed in Kashmir, where Indian troops are locked in a fierce battle with hundreds of armed infiltrators along the Line of Control (LOC) that divides the disputed Himalayan region between the two nations.