BOSTON BOMBER SENTENCED TO DEATH, APOLOGISES TO HIS VICTIMS

BOSTON,  Massachusetts, USA – Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev apologised on Wednesday (Jun 24) to his victims for the first time for the suffering he caused, moments before a federal judge formally sentenced him to death.

The US citizen of Chechen descent was sentenced to death on six counts over the 2013 bombings, one of the bloodiest assaults on US soil since the Sept 11, 2001 attacks.

Defenselawyer Judy Clarke told the court that Tsarnaev had offered to plead guilty last year, but Wednesday’s remarks were the first time that her client had expressed any public remorse.

“I would like to now apologise to the victims and to the survivors,” said the 21-year-old former university student in his first public remarks since the Apr 15, 2013 bombings that killed three people.

“I am guilty,” he said in a slight Russian accent, standing pale and thin in a dark blazer. 
“Let there be no doubt about that. I am sorry for the lives I have taken, for the suffering, the damage that I have done,” he said, couching his remarks in the name of Allah and asking for God’s forgiveness.

Judge George O’Toole officially imposed the death sentence, which had been reached unanimously by a 12-person jury on May 15.

Government prosecutors had painted Tsarnaev as a remorseless terrorist who deserved to die.
“I sentence you to the penalty of death by execution,” O’Toole told Tsarnaev, before he was led away by US Marshals.

Tsarnaev will eventually sit on federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, but prosecutors said he could be sent in the interim to America’s only “super-max” prison, ADX Florence, in Colorado.

Source: Dawn News...More...