Boston--Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a callous terrorist who carried out the 2013 attack to wage holy war and punish America, the prosecutor argued Monday as his trial neared an end.
Three people were killed and 264 others wounded in the twin blasts at the city's marathon -- the worst attack in the United States since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Tsarnaev's defense has not denied he took part in the attack, and his fate hinges on whether it has convinced jurors he was bullied into this by his older brother, or was an active plotter.
"He wanted to terrorize this country. He wanted to punish America for what it was doing to his people," assistant US attorney Aloke Chakravarty told the court in an emotional closing statement after a one-month trial.
Tsarnaev, a Muslim American of Chechen descent who was a 19-year-old university student at the time, faces the death penalty if convicted.
"That day they felt their were soldiers, that they were mujahideen and they were bringing their battle to Boston," added Chakravarty.
Prosecutors spent four weeks building their case, calling 92 witnesses in an effort to paint Tsarnaev as an active and willing bomber alongside his elder brother, who was killed while on the run.
They portrayed a cold, callous killer -- a marijuana-smoking, laid-back student who had recently failed a number of exams and become an avid reader of the Islamist literature that investigators found on his computer.
Chakravarty showed the jury photographs and video clips, filling the court with the screams of victims, as the camera closed in on blood on the ground, the panic, fear and chaos after the April 15, 2013 attacks.
Government prosecutors say Tsarnaev carried out the attacks to avenge the deaths of fellow Muslims overseas after learning how to build pressure-cooker bombs through Al-Qaeda English-language magazine "Inspire."
AFP
