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 Counter-terrorism expert Matthew Levitt will resume his testimony
after he took the stand on Monday drawing comparisons between Al
Qaeda propaganda found on Tsarnaev's computer and some of his own
words in social media and the note he scrawled before his capture.
Tsarnaev, 21, is accused of killing three people and injuring 264
with a pair of homemade pressure-cooker bombs at the Boston
Marathon's crowded finish line on April 15, 2013, and with fatally
shooting a police officer three days later as he and his 26-year-old
brother, Tamerlan, tried to flee.
His defense attorneys opened the trial March 5 admitting he
committed the crimes, but are seeking to spare him the death penalty
by painting him as a mostly normal American kid who fell under the
spell of his brother, who was killed after a shootout with police
days after the bombing.
 On Monday, Levitt, a senior fellow at a Washington think-tank and a
former U.S. intelligence agent, placed the marathon bombing in the
context of a "global jihad movement" bent on attacking America.
He said that the rise of social media had made it easier for
extremist groups to radicalize young Muslims in the United States
and elsewhere, and encourage them to either fight in foreign wars or
attack at home.
He said some of Tsarnaev's Twitter posts and the message he wrote on
the inside of a dry-docked boat where he was finally captured in a
hail of bullets showed similarities to Al Qaeda lectures and
literature found on his laptop.
"We Muslims are one body you hurt one you hurt us all," the message
inside the boat read, citing aggression in Muslim lands.
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Levitt also said a Twitter post Tsarnaev wrote the day of the 2012
Boston Marathon: "They will spend their money and they will regret
it and then they will be defeated," closely resembled part of a
lecture by late U.S.-born Al Qaeda figure Anwar al-Awlaki found on
his computer.
Tsarnaev's defense attorneys did not have an opportunity to
cross-examine Levitt on Monday, but have argued that it is unclear
where files on Tsarnaev's computer, including instructions for
building a bomb, originated.
Separately, a citizen of Kyrgyzstan is due to plead guilty on
Tuesday on charges of lying to investigators probing the bombing.
The man, Khairullozhon Matanov, was a friend of the Tsarnaev
brothers but played down how well he knew the pair.
(Reporting by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by James Dalgleish)
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