The surviving Boston Marathon bomber was a partner with his co-conspirator brother in a “cold, calculated terrorist act” intended to punish America for killing Muslims, a United States prosecutor has said in closing statements to his death penalty trial.
Government attorney Al Chakravarty sought to rubbish the defence’s case that Muslim student Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (21) was a teenager swayed by his radicalised jihadist brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev (26), now dead, to carry out the twin bombings and kill a university policeman three days later.
The Tsarnaevs “teamed up to terrorise a region in 2013,” said Mr Chakravarty, and that it was Dzhokhar’s choice to be a “terrorist hero”.
The bombings killed three people, maimed 17 and wounded 240 on April 15th, 2013, in the worst attack on US soil since September 2001.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed after a shoot-out with police after a manhunt four days after the twin marathon blasts.
“The defendant thought that his values were more important than the people around him. He wanted to awake the mujahideen, the holy warriors,” he said. “He wanted to terrorise this country; he wanted to punish America for what it was doing to his people.”
Defence lawyer Judy Clarke admitted Tsarnaev’s involvement in the bombings again but disputed the government’s case that he was an “equal partner” and self-radicalised like his brother. “This is simply not true,” she said. The brothers thought differently and acted differently, she said.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev bought the materials for the bombs and made them, and picked the Boston Marathon as a target, she said. Tamerlan led the way down Boylston Street and “Dzhokhar followed”, she said.
“We don’t deny that Dzhokhar fully participated in the events but if not for Tamerlan it would not have happened,” she told the jury as the defence team tries to save Tsarnaev from the death penalty. Tsarnaev was “an adolescent . . . drawn into the passion and belief of his older brother,” she said.
Double life
The government argued that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a naturalised US citizen and ethnic Chechen, lived a double life: laid-back and dope-smoking to his friends but secretly a mujahideen or Muslim holy warrior preparing to carry out the deadly attack with this brother.
Mr Chakravarty drew on wrenching testimony showing the grisly injuries inflicted by the home-made pressure-cooker bomb Tsarnaev planted outside the Forum restaurant on Boylston Street.
The blast, near the finish line of the marathon, killed Chinese student Lu Lingzi (23) and schoolboy Martin Richard (8).
The government prosecutor replayed video footage and displayed photographs showing how Tsarnaev hid behind a tree for four minutes “looming” over three children from the Richard family.
“These children weren’t innocent to him: they were American,” said Mr Chakravarty, noting how the younger Tsarnaev brother picked that spot to “cause maximum damage”.
“He thought his cause was more important than the people around him,” the prosecutor told the jury who will decide whether he should be put to death during the second phase of the trial.
That is likely to be a harder fought phase given the admission of Tsarnaev’s involvement in the so-called guilt phase.
Judge George O'Toole spent more than an hour outlining the 30 charges against Tsarnaev, 17 of which carry the death penalty. They include the killing of Massachusetts Institute of Technology officer Sean Collier in the hours before Tamerlan was killed. Ms Clarke said Tamerlan killed the police officer. "He was shot between the eyes – he was assassinated," said Mr Chakravarty, noting how he was shot at least four times in the head.
Dry-docked boat
The prosecutor referred to a scrawled statement that Tsarnaev wrote in a dry-docked boat as he hid from police during the manhunt. Tsarnaev wrote inside the boat that he “cannot stand to watch” the US government’s killing of innocent Muslim civilians “go unpunished”.
“He wanted to tell the world why he did what he did,” he said. He wanted to take credit . . . to justify his actions. Concluding his statement, the prosecutor said: “This is how the defendant saw his crimes,” showing the jury a jihadist flag while playing jihadist music the brothers listened to.
“But this is the cold reality of what his crimes left behind,” he continued, showing the jury a series of images including the blood-stained footpath of Boylston Street and the torn bodies of spectators.
Tsarnaev, dressed in a white shirt and black jacket with his hair tousled, sat unmoved in court during the most harrowing video evidence presented to the jury.
Prosecutor William Weinreb, in a rebuttal, called the Tsarnaevs “partners in crime” and that these crimes were “a two-man job”.
Among those in attendance for the closing statements were William and Denise, the parents of Martin Richard, and Ed Davis, the Boston police commissioner at the time of the bombings.
The jury will begin deliberations today.
