INDICTED ON 30 COUNTS, BOSTON ACCUSED MAY FACE DEATH

WASHINGTON: A United States federal grand jury on Thursday indicted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston bomber, on 30 counts, including using a weapon of mass destruction to cause deaths, bombing a public place and the murder of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, among others that could get him the death penalty.

The indictment also revealed details about the radicalisation of the Tsarnaev brothers and their capture for the April 15 bombings.

Seventeen of the 30 counts carry the death penalty. Dzhokhar is to be arraigned on July 10.

His elder brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev had died after a gun battle with police officers on April 19 and Dzhokhar had driven over him “contributing to his death”, the indictment said.

Tsarnaev had abandoned the vehicle later and hid in a boat parked in the backyard of a house outside Boston, which is where the law enforcement officers found him.

“The US Government is killing our innocent civilians,” he had written on the walls and beams of the boat, according to the indictment. “I can’t stand to see such evil go unpunished.”

The brothers had built the bomb following instructions in Inspire, an online magazine published by a Yemeni affiliate of al Qaeda. The indictment said the brothers had also downloaded radical publications such as “The Slicing Sword,” which called on Muslims to not offer allegiance to governments that “invade Muslim lands.”