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 The testimony cut to the heart one of America's most closely
watched court battles, with prosecutors painting Tsarnaev as a
home-grown terrorist and his defense arguing he was a mostly normal
American kid who came under the influence of his radical older
brother.
Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near
East Studies, said some of Tsarnaev’s Twitter posts and parts of a
note he scrawled inside a drydocked boat where he was captured
several days after the deadly marathon attack resembled Islamist
publications.
"We see in them (concepts from) al-Awlaki’s statements and other
writings from the radicalizers," Levitt said, referring to Anwar
al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Al Qaeda figure who published lectures and a
glossy English-language magazine about violent jihad found on
Tsarnaev’s computer.
Awlaki was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011.
Levitt added that the marathon bombing appeared to fit into a
broader "global jihad movement" that encourages Muslims to commit
violence targeting the United States.
Tsarnaev is accused of killing three people and injuring 264 with a
pair of homemade pressure-cooker bombs at the race'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 the city.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev died following a gunfight with police later that
night and Dzhokhar was arrested, severely wounded by gunfire, after
a homeowner in the suburb of Watertown found him hiding in a boat in
his backyard. He left a note in that boat suggesting that the
attacks were an act of retribution for U.S. military campaigns in
Muslim-dominated countries and that he viewed his brother as a
martyr.
"We Muslims are one body you hurt one you hurt us all," the message
read, citing what it said was aggression in Muslim lands. "I don’t
like killing innocent people it is forbidden in Islam, but due to
said (...) it is allowed," the message read, with a word missing due
to a bullet hole.
Defense attorneys have admitted that the 21-year-old defendant
committed the crimes he is accused of, but are trying to save his
life in the capital case by arguing that his brother masterminded
the attacks.
FBI computer specialist Kevin Swindon testified earlier that copies
of al Qaeda's "Inspire" magazine were found on Tsarnaev's laptop,
including one with an article titled: "How to Make a Bomb in the
Kitchen of Your Mom." It also included several audio files of Awlaki
lectures, he said.
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Swindon said the laptop also had backup files of Tsarnaev's iPhone
that showed he texted a friend, Dias Kadyrbayev, shortly after the
attack, saying: "U saw the news?... Better not text me my friend."
Defense attorney William Fick grilled Swindon in cross-examination
in an attempt to point out that it was unclear where the files on
Tsarnaev's computer originated, and that there was a chance that
some were placed there by Tamerlan or others.
Fick asked Swindon about a thumb drive investigators had found at a
landfill along with other items belonging to Dzhokhar, which
contained files on how to make explosives: “Isn’t it true that every
file and folder on this drive was created by Tamerlan’s computer?”
“I don’t know,” Swindon replied.
Separately, a poll released on Monday found that more Boston-area
residents would prefer to see Tsarnaev sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole rather than death. Some 49 percent
of respondents to a poll conducted for WBUR radio by MassInc Polling
said they preferred a life sentence, with 38 percent wanting to see
a death sentence.
The bombing killed restaurant manager Krystle Campbell, 29, graduate
student Lingzi Lu, 23, and 8-year-old Martin Richard. Massachusetts
Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, 27, was shot
dead three days later.
(Additional reporting by Scott Malone; editing by Bernadette Baum)
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