Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a terrorist who wanted to punish America with a deadly 2013 attack, a federal prosecutor said yesterday as the government urged a jury to sentence Tsarnaev (21) to death.
Citing a note that Tsarnaev wrote while hiding in a boat, bleeding, after a gunfight with police four days after the attack on April 15th, 2013, assistant US attorney Steven Mellin said the ethnic Chechen had turned against his adopted country.
“He wrote, ‘Now I don’t like killing innocent people, but in this case it is allowed because America needs to be punished’ . . . These are the words of a terrorist who is convinced he did the right thing,” Mr Mellin said. “He killed indiscriminately to make a political statement . . . His actions have earned him a sentence of death.”
Following closing statements, the same jury that last month convicted Tsarnaev of killing three people and wounding 264 others in one of the highest-profile attacks on US soil since September 11th, 2001, will begin deliberations on whether to sentence him to death by lethal injection or life in prison without possibility of release.
Mr Mellin showed the jury photographs of the bombing’s immediate aftermath, with victims whose legs were blown off sitting in pools of blood, and another image of a 29-year-old restaurant manager screaming in pain before she died of her injuries.
The defence, meanwhile, described Tsarnaev as an adrift teenager under the spell of his brother, Tamerlan (26), who they contend was the architect and driving force behind the bombing and the murder three days later of a police officer.
Defence attorneys noted that when Dzhokhar’s parents returned to their native Russia in 2012, he was left under the influence of Tamerlan, who had become obsessed with becoming a jihadist. Tamerlan also briefly returned to Russia.
“The horrific events of the Boston Marathon bombing cannot be told or understood with any degree of reality without talking about Tamerlan,” defence attorney Judith Clarke told jurors.
"Tamerlan left the United States wanting to wage war. He was rejected as a warrior . . . He came back to the United States as a jihadi wannabe. He couldn't fit into any movement, so he would create his own."
Ms Clarke showed the court a photograph of Tamerlan wearing an Arab headdress and holding a handgun in front of a white flag with Arabic writing. – (Reuters)