Boston bomber apologises for fatal marathon attack

Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev yesterday apologised for the deadly 2013 attack at a hearing.

A US judge formally sentenced him to death for killing four people and injuring 264 in the bombing and its aftermath.

“I am sorry for the lives I have taken, for the suffering that I have caused you, for the damage I have done, irreparable damage,” Tsarnaev, 21, told a courtroom packed with parents of some of the dead and some of those wounded on April 15, 2013.

It was the first time that Tsarnaev, who did not speak in his own defence during his trial, had addressed the court.

“In case there is any doubt, I am guilty of this attack, along with my brother,” Tsarnaev said, standing at the defence table.

Tsarnaev had been found guilty of killing three people and injuring 264 in the bombing near the finish line of the world-renowned race, as well as fatally shooting a police officer three days later. The same federal jury that convicted him in April voted for the death penalty in May. “As long as your name is mentioned, what will be remembered is the evil you’ve done”, US District Judge George O’Toole told Tsarnaev before sentencing him to death by lethal injection.

“What will be remembered is that you murdered and maimed innocent people and that you did it willfully and intentionally. You did it on purpose.”

Killed in the bombing were Martin Richard, 8, Chinese exchange student Lingzi Lu, 26, and restaurant manager Krystle Campbell, 29. Three days later, Tsarnaev and his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, shot dead Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, 26.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died following a gunfight with police that ended when Dzhokhar ran him over with a car.

Even after the sentencing, the legal wrangling over Tsarnaev’s fate could play out for years, if not decades. Just three of the 74 people sentenced to death in the US for federal crimes since 1998 have been executed.

• Reuters