Victims condemn Boston Marathon bomber’s apology

A courtroom sketch of Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Picture: AP

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev broke his silence on the death and devastation he caused two years ago with words that were not a political tirade or a justification.

He apologised to victims and their families at his formal sentencing in federal court in Boston.

“I am sorry for the lives that I’ve taken, for the suffering that I’ve caused you, for the damage that I’ve done – irreparable damage,” the 21-year-old former college student said, speaking haltingly with a heavy accent.

But some bombing survivors said his apology was disingenuous and incomplete.

“After we heard it, we wished we hadn’t,” said Lynn Julian, who suffered a traumatic brain injury and a back injury, and now suffers post-traumatic stress disorder. “He threw in an apology to the survivors that seemed insincere.”

Prosecutor Carmen Ortiz said Tsarnaev’s statement was more noteworthy for what he did not say.

“He didn’t renounce terrorism. He didn’t renounce violent extremism,” she said.

After Tsarnaev said his piece, US District Judge George O’Toole Jr quoted a line from Shakespeare: “The evil that men do lives after them. The good is often interred with their bones.”

“So it will be for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev,” the judge added, telling the bomber that no-one will remember that his teachers were fond of him, that his friends found him fun to be with or that he showed compassion to disabled people.

“What will be remembered is that you murdered and maimed innocent people, and that you did it wilfully and intentionally,” the judge said.

Tsarnaev looked down and rubbed his hands together as the judge announced he would be executed, the punishment decided by a jury last month for the 2013 attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260.

The apology came after Tsarnaev listened for about three hours as a procession of 24 victims and survivors lashed out at him for his “cowardly” and “disgusting” acts.

“He can’t possibly have had a soul to do such a horrible thing,” said Karen Rand McWatters, who lost a leg in the attack and whose best friend, 29-year-old Krystle Campbell, was killed.

Tsarnaev’s apology was peppered with religious references and praise of Allah. He asked that Allah have mercy upon him and his dead brother.

Tsarnaev will almost certainly be sent to the death row unit at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, where Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed. It could take decades for his appeals to work their way through the courts.