Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev faces the death penalty after a jury unanimously convicted him Wednesday of carrying out the 2013 attack, the worst in the United States since the 9/11 al Qaeda hijackings. The 12-person jury took a day and a half to find the 21-year-old former student guilty on all 30 counts related to the April 15, 2013 attacks, the murder of a police officer, a car jacking and shootout while on the run.
The Muslim immigrant of Chechen descent, who took US citizenship in 2012, now faces the death penalty or life in prison without parole when he is sentenced by the same jury at the second phase of the trial. That phase could start early next week, Judge George O'Toole said.
A pale Tsarnaev stood next to his lawyers as the court clerk read out the verdict. He occasionally fidgeted, hooked one hand into his trouser pocket and swayed slightly, dressed in a blue sweater and dark blazer.
Seventeen of his convictions carry the possibility of the death penalty and survivors were in court to hear the verdict.
Three people were killed and 264 others wounded, including 17 who lost limbs, in the twin blasts at the city's marathon nearly two years ago.
Tsarnaev was arrested four days later, hiding and injured in a boat on which he had scrawled a bloody message apparently justifying the attacks to avenge the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The marathon bombings shocked the relatively small north-eastern city of Boston and revived fears of terrorism in the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Government prosecutors portrayed Tsarnaev, at the time a 19-year-old enrolled at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, as a callous terrorist who carried out the bombings to punish the United States.
Tsarnaev's lawyers admitted that he planted one of the pressure-cooker bombs concealed in a backpack, but portrayed him as a feckless accomplice, bullied or manipulated into taking part by his more radical elder brother.
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