April 10, 2015

This week, on April 8, a jury in Boston found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty on all 30 counts for crimes committed in and around the bombing at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. The bombing was the worst terrorist act in the United States since September 11, 2001.

Two homemade bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2013. One of the two men who planted the bombs was found guilty this week. Credit: © Dan Lampariello, Reuters/Land

Two brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev,  planned and carried out the bombing at the Boston race. Three people there were killed and some 200 others were injured. Because of the nature of the bomb, a pressure-cooker filled with shrapnel, many of the injured lost limbs in the attack.

The Tsarnaevs were ethnic Chechens. The older brother, Tamerlan, had been born in Russia. Dzhokhar had been born in Kyrgyzstan but was a naturalized American citizen.  The prosecution in this case argued that both brothers had been radicalized by Islamic extremism. The defense argued that the older brother had brainwashed and dominated his younger brother to act in the bombing, but that Tamerlan was the engineer of the entire crime. (Tamerlan died in a shootout with police when caught soon after the bombing.)

The defense for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev never disputed his involvement in the crime. His lawyers are hoping to spare his life and presented him as someone who would not have acted without his brother’s bullying. The jury’s next job will be to decide on sentencing, and their choice is between the death penalty and life in prison without parole.

Experts pointed out that the trial left unanswered questions. One important point that never came to light was where the brothers manufactured their bomb. Police know that they did not use Tamerlan’s apartment or Dzhokhar’s college dorm room. If they used the home or garage of another person, was that person also involved in the bombing? It remains unanswered.

Other World Book articles: 

• Boston Marathon bombing
• Terrorism

April 25, 2013

More than 10,000 people, including many uniformed police and military personnel, attended a campus memorial yesterday for Sean A. Collier, a police officer for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology allegedly killed by suspects in the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings. One of the speakers at the service was United States Vice President Joe Biden. Three people died when two bombs exploded within seconds of each other near the finish line of the marathon. At least 260 people were injured, some critically. Also on Wednesday, Copley Square, the site of the attacks, was reopened to residents and business people. Boston officials had closed the square and surrounding area while investigators searched for evidence related to the attack.

Nineteen-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the suspects in the bombings, remains hospitalized as he recuperates from wounds suffered in a shootout with police in the early morning hours of April 19.  His brother and fellow suspect, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed in the shootout, which followed a wild police case and Collier’s murder. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured in Watertown later that day. On April 22, he was charged by the U. S. attorney’s office for the district of Massachusetts with conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction against persons and property, resulting in death.

April 19, 2013

The city of Boston and its suburbs are in a virtual lockdown as hundreds of police officers and federal agents conduct a citywide manhunt. They are looking for one Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who with his brother, Tamerlan, is believed to have carried out the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15. Twenty-six-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed earlier today after leading the police on a wild chase following the fatal shooting of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer. Before killing the campus police officer, the brothers allegedly robbed a 7-Eleven store, critically wounded a transit officer, and carjacked a SUV.  Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has issued a warning that residents of Boston and its neighboring suburbs should “stay indoors, with their doors locked.”

According to Massachusetts state police officers, the two men were Chechen emigres. Chechnya, a predominantly Muslim territory in southern Russia, sought independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Between 1994 and 2009, the Russian government waged two brutal wars against Chechen militants. During that period, Chechen terrorist groups carried out a number of attacks in Russia, most famously the 2004 Moscow subway bombing and the 2004 Beslan school siege that ending with the deaths of more than 380 people, including many children.

Additional World Book articles:

• Russia 1995 (a Back in Time article)
• Russia 1999 (a Back in Time article)
• Russia 2004 (a Back in Time article)
• Russia 2005 (a Back in Time article)

April 17

Two bombs exploded within seconds of each other near the finish line of the Boston Marathon just off Copley Square on April 15. At least three people were killed, including an 8-year-old boy. Some 180 people were injured.

At least one of the bombs, and possibly both, had been packed inside a pressure cooker that had been placed inside a backpack or duffel bag. According to law enforcement officials, pieces of pressure cookers were recovered from the crime scene. Bomb experts note that explosives sealed inside pressure cookers increase the force with which pieces of shrapnel (metal)–such as ball bearings, BB’s, and nails–will explode outward. Physicians who treated the wounded found large amounts of shrapnel embedded in patient’s tissues. They reported that at least 10 of the victims have lost limbs. The use of pressure cookers is a common way to build bombs that are known as improvised explosive devices (IED’s). A number of pressure-cooker bombs were used in a 2006 Mumbai bombing that killed some 200 people.

The attack caused the first-ever halt to the Boston Marathon, which is sponsored by the Boston Athletic Association. The race in 2013 was the 117th running of the marathon.

Additional World Book articles:

• Boston
• India (Back in time-2006) 
• Terrorism

Additional website:

• Boston Athletic Association