Convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev spoke in public for the first time since the April 2013 attack just before the judge formally handed down the 21-year-old’s death sentence. He apologized to the victims and their families.
“I’d like to now apologize to the victims and survivors. I am sorry for the lives that I have taken, for the suffering that I have caused you, for the damage, the irreparable damage,” Tsarnaev said in the Boston, Massachusetts courtroom on Wednesday.
You told us just how unbearable it was, this thing I put you through,” Tsarnaev told them, standing in the courtroom with his hands folded in front of him.
“I am Muslim. My religion is Islam. I pray to Allah to bestow his mercy on those affected in the bombing and their families,” he continued in a low voice, pausing between sentences. “I pray for your healing.”
“I ask Allah for his mercy for me and my brother and my family.”
Tsarnaev was convicted of 30 charges relating to the bombing and subsequent shooting spree in April of this year. Of those, 17 counts were capital crimes, making him eligible for the death penalty. In mid-May, the same jury that convicted him sentenced him to die, but he was not formally sentenced by the judge at that time.