Boston: A US jury yesterday unanimously sentenced Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death for perpetrating one of the bloodiest assaults in America since the September 11, 2001 attacks. It took the jury more than 14 hours to choose death on six of the 17 capital counts over life imprisonment for the 21-year-old Muslim former university student of Chechen descent who came to the United States as a child.
The same 12-member panel convicted him on April 8 on all 30 counts relating to the April 15, 2013 bombings, the murder of a police officer, a car jacking and a shootout while on the run.
Three people were killed and 264 others wounded, including 17 who lost limbs, in the twin blasts near the finish line at the northeastern city’s popular marathon.
Tsarnaev went on the run and was arrested four days later, hiding and injured in a grounded boat on which he had scrawled a bloody message apparently defending the attacks as a means to avenge the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two years later, he stood in a dark blazer with his hands clasped before him, showing no emotion as the court clerk read from the death penalty.AFP
