Bomber’s lawyers press for jail

– Jurors deciding the fate of convicted Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were to hear yesterday from more witnesses picked by defence attorneys pressing for the 21-year-old to be spared execution because he was influenced by his radicalised older brother.

Tsarnaev was convicted last month of joining his now-deceased brother Tamerlan in bombing the race’s finish line on April 15, 2013, killing three people and injuring 264, many of whom

Boston

had limbs ripped off in the blasts.

His lawyers are trying to convince the jury he should be sentenced to life in prison without parole, not death, for his involvement in one of the highest-profi le attacks on US soil since September 11, 2001.

Over the past two weeks the defence team has called more than 40 witnesses, many of whom described the young ethnic Chechen as a mild-mannered teenager who, even as his college grades slipped and his family fell apart, remained the kind and well-liked youngster he had been as a child.

A long-time family friend, Elmirza Khozhugov, testified that Tsarnaev “would always go along” with whatever his older brother, Tamerlan, suggested and that Tamerlan had become deeply interested in religion and politics.

Investigators found al-Qaeda propaganda on both their computers, and a note by Dzhokhar casting the bombing as retribution for US military campaigns in Muslim lands. – Reuters