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Tag Archives: bomber
Suspects arrested over Pakistan mosque blast, police focus on how bomber got in
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 1 (Reuters) – Police investigating a suicide bombing that killed more than 100 people at a Pakistan mosque said on Tuesday that several people had been arrested, and they could not rule out the possibility that the bomber had internal assistance evading security checks.
The bombing was the most deadly in a decade to hit Peshawar, a restive northwestern city near the Afghan border, and all but three of those killed were police, making it most suffered by Pakistan’s security forces in a single attack in recent history.
The bomber struck on Monday as hundreds of worshippers gathered for noon prayers in a mosque that was purpose built for the police and their families living in a highly fortified area.
“We have found some excellent clues, and based on these clues we have made some major arrests,” Peshawar Police Chief Ijaz Khan told Reuters.
“We can’t rule out internal assistance but since the investigation is still in progress, I will not be able to share more details.”
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Investigators, who include counter-terrorism and intelligence officials, are focusing on how the attacker managed to breach the military and police checkpoints leading into the Police Lines district, a colonial-era, self-contained encampment in the city centre that is home to middle- and lower-ranking police personnel and their families.
[1/6] Rescue workers clear the rubble as they search for victims, after a suicide blast in a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan January 31, 2023. REUTERS/Fayaz Aziz
Defence Minister Khawaja Asif had said the bomber was in the first row in the prayer hall when he struck. Remains of the attacker had been recovered, provincial Police Chief Moazzam Jah Ansari told Reuters.
“We believe the attackers are not an organised group,” he added.
The most active militant group in the area, the Pakistani Taliban, also called Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has denied responsibility for the attack, which no group has claimed so far. Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah had told parliament a breakaway faction of the TTP was to blame.
The blast demolished the upper storey of the mosque. It was is the deadliest in Peshawar since twin suicide bombings at All Saints Church killed scores of worshippers in September 2013, in what remains the deadliest attack on the country’s Christian minority.
Peshawar sits on the edge of the Pashtun tribal lands, a region mired in violence for the past two decades.
The TTP is an umbrella group for Sunni and sectarian Islamist factions opposed to the government in Islamabad. The group has recently stepped up attacks against police.
Reporting by Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad; Writing by Miral Fahmy; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Suicide bomber breaches high security, kills 47 in Pakistani mosque
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 30 (Reuters) – A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a crowded mosque in a highly fortified security compound in Pakistan on Monday, killing 47 people, the latest attack by resurgent Islamist militants targeting police in the unstable country.
Police said the attacker appeared to have passed through several barricades manned by security forces to get into the “Red Zone” compound that houses police and counter-terrorism offices in the volatile northwestern city of Peshawar.
“It was a suicide bombing,” Peshawar Police Chief Ijaz Khan told Reuters. At least 47 people were killed and 176 wounded, he said, many of them critically.
It came a day before an International Monetary Fund team mission to Islamabad to initiate talks on unlocking funding for the South Asian economy hit by a balance of payment crisis.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attack.
Officials said the bomber detonated his load at the moment hundreds of people lined up to say their prayers.
“We have found traces of explosives,” Khan told reporters, adding that a security lapse had clearly occurred as the bomber had slipped through the most secured area of the compound.
An inquiry was under way into how the attacker breached such an elite security cordon and whether there was any inside help.
Khan said the mosque hall was packed with up to 400 worshippers, and that most of the dead were police officers.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, the worst in Peshawar since March 2022 when an Islamic State suicide bombing killed at least 58 people in a Shi’ite Muslim mosque during Friday prayers.
`ALLAH IS THE GREATEST`
Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told Geo TV that the bomber was standing in the first row of worshippers.
“As the prayer leader said ‘Allah is the greatest’, there was a big bang,” Mushtaq Khan, a policeman with a head wound, told reporters from his hospital bed.
“We couldn’t figure out what happened as the bang was deafening. It threw me out of the veranda. The walls and roof fell on me. Thanks to God, he saved me.”
The explosion brought down the upper storey of the mosque, trapping dozens of worshippers in the rubble. Live TV footage showed rescuers cutting through the collapsed rooftop to make their way down and tend to victims caught in the wreckage.
“We can’t say how many are still under it,” said provincial governor Haji Ghulam Ali.
“The sheer scale of the human tragedy is unimaginable,” Sharif said. “This is no less than an attack on Pakistan. The nation is overwhelmed by a deep sense of grief. I have no doubt terrorism is our foremost national security challenge.”
Witnesses described chaotic scenes as the police and the rescuers scrambled to rush the wounded to hospitals.
Sharif, who appealed to employees of his party to donate blood at the hospitals, said anyone targeting Muslims during prayer had nothing to do with Islam.
“The U.S. mission in Pakistan expressed deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims of the horrific attack,” Washington’s embassy said a statement.
Peshawar, which straddles the edge of Pakistan’s tribal districts bordering Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, is frequently targeted by Islamist militant groups including Islamic State and the Pakistani Taliban.
Reporting by Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad; Writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Asif Shahzad; Editing by Miral Fahmy, Simon Cameron-Moore, Bernadette Baum and Mark Heinrich
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Umar Patek: Bali bomber released on parole in Indonesia after serving half of 20-year sentence
Jakarta, Indonesia
CNN
—
Indonesia has released on parole Umar Patek, a bomb maker in the deadly 2002 Bali attacks, the Ministry of Law and Human Rights said on Wednesday.
Patek, a member of the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah, was jailed for 20 years in 2012 after he was found guilty of mixing bombs that ripped through two Bali nightclubs, killing 202 people, including 88 Australians.
After his release on Wednesday, Patek is required to join a “mentoring program” until April 2030, according to the ministry statement. If any violation is discovered during that time, his parole will be revoked, the ministry added.
In August, Indonesia’s government said that Patek was eligible for parole after his sentence was reduced, a decision that sparked criticism from the victims’ families. His scheduled release was delayed after uproar from Australia.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also criticized the announcement at the time, saying he planned to raise the issue with Indonesia.
Patek, who was also convicted for his role in deadly church bombings in 2000, was granted a series of small reductions to his sentence as part of remissions regularly given to inmates to mark Indonesia’s August 17 independence day.
On Thursday, Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said it would be a “difficult day” for Australians who lost loved ones and relatives in the attacks.
“I think this going to be a very difficult day for many Australians – all Australians – to hear about the release of Umar Patek,” Marles told ABC radio. “I’m particularly thinking right now of the families of those who were killed and injured in the Bali bombings.”
Marles added that the Australian government would continue to engage Indonesian authorities about ensuring Patek was under constant surveillance.
Many members of the Jemaah Islamiyah group, like Patek, trained and fought in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the early 1990s and were deeply influenced by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s teachings.
Patek eluded investigators looking into the 2002 attacks for many years until his capture in January 2011 in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the same village where US Navy SEALs shot and killed bin Laden several months later.
Patek was then extradited to Indonesia, where he was sentenced in 2012.
Three of the masterminds of the Bali bombings – Imam Samudra, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim and Ali Ghufron – were executed in 2008. Patek was the last of the accused to stand trial in Indonesia.
Indonesia releases convicted Bali bomber Umar Patek | Crime News
Patek was serving a 20 year sentence for his role in the 2002 attacks that killed 202 people from 21 countries.
Indonesia has released on parole Umar Patek, convicted for his role in the Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people in 2002, after he completed just more than half of his sentence.
Patek, a member of the Al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), was jailed for 20 years in 2012 after he was found guilty of mixing the bombs used in the attack on two busy nightclubs in the resort town of Kuta.
Following his release, Patek will be required to join a “mentoring programme” until April 2030, according to a statement from the ministry of law and human rights on Wednesday that announced his release.
His parole will be revoked if he violates any of its terms during that time, the ministry added.
The Bali attacks were the worst in Indonesian history and led to a crackdown on hardline groups such as JI. Australia and the United States also provided funding and assistance to strengthen Jakarta’s counterterrorism operations.
Indonesia announced in August that Patek had become eligible for parole after some reductions to his sentence, in a decision criticised by Australia, home to 88 of the Bali attacks.
On Thursday, Peter Hughes, one of 200 people injured in the bombings and who spoke at Patek’s trial, said the convicted bomb-maker deserved to serve the “harshest sentence”.
“For him to be let out, it’s laughable,” he told the Australian national broadcaster ABC.
Patek was captured in Pakistan in 2011 after nearly 10 years on the run.
Prosecutors sought a life sentence for the 52-year-old because he showed remorse during his trial and the judge sentenced him to 20 years. Patek was also convicted over other charges related to a series of bombings in Jakarta in 2000 that targeted Christmas Eve church services and killed 19 people.
Indonesia regularly gives sentence remissions to inmates to mark Indonesia’s August 17 independence day.
Authorities believe Patek had “shown changes” after undergoing a deradicalisation programme, Law and Human Rights Ministry Spokesperson Rika Aprianti told AFP.
“Most importantly, he has pledged allegiance to the unitary state of the Republic of Indonesia,” she said.
Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles urged Indonesia to keep Patek under “constant surveillance”.
Tied side-by-side to wooden posts on a small prison island, most of the attackers were executed by firing squad in 2008.
Ali Imron, who helped organise the attack and drove the van packed with explosives, is serving a life sentence after showing remorse during his trial.
Indonesian suicide bomber leaves note criticising new criminal code
BANDUNG, Indonesia, Dec 7 (Reuters) – A suspected Islamist militant, angered by Indonesia’s new criminal code, killed one other person and wounded at least 10 in a suicide bomb attack at a police station in the city of Bandung on Wednesday, authorities said.
The suicide bomber was believed to be affiliated with the Islamic State-inspired group Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) and had previously been jailed on terrorism charges, Indonesian police chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo told a news conference.
The police chief said the attacker, identified as Agus Sujatno, was released in late 2021 and investigators had found dozens of documents protesting the country’s controversial new criminal code at the crime scene.
“We found dozens of papers protesting the newly ratified criminal code,” he said.
Though there are sharia-based provisions in the new criminal code ratified by parliament on Tuesday, Islamist hardliners could have been angered by other articles that could be used to crackdown on the propagation of extremist ideologies, analysts say.
West Java police chief Suntana earlier told Metro TV that authorities had found a blue motorbike at the scene, which they believed was used by the attacker.
Attached to the bike was a note carrying a message decrying the new criminal code as “an infidel product,” Suntana said.
Todd Elliott, a senior security analyst at Concord Consulting in Jakarta, said it was likely the attack had been planned for some time and was an ideological rejection of the country’s new laws.
[1/13] Indonesia Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (INAFIS) officers investigate following a blast at a district police station, that according to authorities was a suspected suicide bombing, in Bandung, West Java province, Indonesia, December 7, 2022. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan
“While all the attention is on some of these sharia-based provisions in the criminal code and how that is an indication of the spread of conservative Islam in Indonesia, there are also changes in the criminal code that hardliners would not support,” he said.
“Including outlawing any ideology that goes against the state ideology, Pancasila, and that would also include extremist ideology.”
Video footage from the scene of Wednesday’s attack showed smoke rising from the damaged police station, with debris n the ground.
“Suddenly I heard the sound of an explosion… I saw a few police officers come out from the station and they couldn’t walk properly,” Hanes, a 21-year-old street vendor who witnessed the explosion told Reuters.
Islamist militants have in recent years carried out attacks in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, including at churches, police stations and venues frequented by foreigners.
Members of JAD were responsible for a series of suicide church bombings in the city of Surabaya in 2018. Those attacks were perpetrated by three families, who also attached suicide vests to their young children, and killed at least 30 people.
In 2021, a pair of JAD newlyweds carried out a suicide bomb attack at a cathedral in Makassar, killing only themselves.
In an effort to crack down on militants, Indonesia created a tough new anti-terrorism law after suicide bombings linked to JAD.
The group, which is now largely splintered, has been significantly weakened by a wave of arrests by the counterterrorism agency in recent years, analysts say.
Reporting by Ananda Teresia, Fransiska Nangoy, Stefanno Sulaiman, Yuddy Cahya Budiman and Kate Lamb; Writing by Kate Lamb; Editing by Ed Davies, Gerry Doyle & Simon Cameron-Moore
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
B-21 bomber unveiled by Northrop Grumman in California
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, speaking in front of the hangar, said that the plane is proof of the Defense Department’s long-term commitment to building advanced capabilities that “will fortify America’s ability to deter aggression, today and into the future.” The stealthy plane, he said, has “50 years of advances in low-observable technology” built in, making it difficult for “even the most sophisticated air-defense systems” to detect a B-21 in the sky.
“The B-21 looks imposing,” Austin said. “But what’s under the frame and the space-age coatings is even more impressive.”
Austin added that U.S. defense is rooted in deterrence, and the development of the B-21 again serves as a symbol.
“We are again making it plain to any potential foe: The risks and costs of aggression far outweigh any conceivable gains,” Austin said.
The program is expected to cost at least $80 billion, with the Air Force seeking at least 100 planes. It marks the U.S. military’s first aircraft with so called sixth-generation technology, relying on advanced artificial intelligence, computer networking and data fusion to assist pilots as they carry out long-range bombing missions requiring them to slip in and out of enemy airspace. The Air Force also is exploring whether the B-21 could be flown remotely, though that would likely occur years after it first takes flight.
Much of the program remains classified, even as senior U.S. defense officials and company executives celebrated its progress. Media attending the event here in Palmdale were required to follow a slew of ground rules, including a ban on cellphones within the viewing area and, for visual journalists, restrictions on how the aircraft could be photographed.
There are six prototypes of the B-21, company officials said. A first test flight is expected next year.
For now, the Raider is in a “ground test” phase, with officials from the Air Force and Northrop Grumman conducting stress tests, evaluating the application of its radar-deflecting paint, and scrutinizing basic functions such as taxiing, Northrop Grumman officials said.
More than 8,000 people are working on aspects of the program, with aircraft parts coming from 40 states.
The Pentagon intends for the Raider to replace aging B-2 Spirit and B-1B Lancer bombers, phasing out the older aircraft by the 2040s. B-52 bombers, many decades old, also could be replaced by the B-21 in coming years. The unveiling event Friday included flyovers by all three aging bombers.
Until 2006, the Defense Department believed it could get by with its existing fleet of bombers until 2037. But the Pentagon began researching alternatives over the next decade, launching a contract competition for a new long-range bomber in 2014.
The U.S. military has for many years encountered costly problems and delays in developing other major weapons systems, including the advanced F-35 fighter likely to be teamed with the B-21 in future operations.
Air Force and company officials said in a panel discussion with reporters on Friday that the program continues to meet service requirements for cost, though the cost per copy has continued to rise. In 2010, the service said it hoped each plane would cost about $550 million. By 2019, the price had risen to $639 million, according to a Congressional Research Service report released last year, and the cost is expected to continue climbing.
Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown, chief of staff of the Air Force, told reporters in Palmdale that the development of the B-21 has been a product of collaboration between the service and Northrop Grumman. He noted that the plane’s Raider nickname is a nod to the Doolittle Raiders, U.S. service members who launched a long, daring bombing raid into Japan in April 1942, just months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii drew the United States into World War II.
“That innovative spirit is sitting behind us right now,” Brown said, speaking in the hangar before the unveiling event as the B-21 sat under a cloak.
Kathy Warden, chief executive of Northrop Grumman, said Friday that the company iterated on thousands of versions of the plane before selecting a design. Some of its testing and development occurs digitally before the company builds hardware, limiting costs.
“In many ways,” Warden said, “we are taking technology from the future and bringing it to the here and now in this aircraft.”
U.S. unveils new nuclear stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider
America’s newest nuclear stealth bomber made its debut Friday after years of secret development, and as part of the Pentagon’s answer to rising concerns over a future conflict with China.
The B-21 Raider is the first new American bomber aircraft in more than 30 years. Almost every aspect of the program is classified.
As evening fell over the Air Force’s Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, the public got its first glimpse of the Raider in a tightly controlled ceremony. It started with a flyover of the three bombers still in service: the B-52 Stratofortress, the B-1 Lancer and the B-2 Spirit. Then the hangar doors slowly opened and the B-21 was towed partially out of the building.
U.S. Air Force
“This isn’t just another airplane,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said. “It’s the embodiment of America’s determination to defend the republic that we all love.”
The B-21 is part of the Pentagon’s efforts to modernize all three legs of its nuclear triad, which includes silo-launched nuclear ballistic missiles and submarine-launched warheads, as it shifts from the counterterrorism campaigns of recent decades to meet China’s rapid military modernization.
China is on track to have 1,500 nuclear weapons by 2035, and its gains in hypersonics, cyber warfare and space capabilities present “the most consequential and systemic challenge to U.S. national security and the free and open international system,” the Pentagon said this week in its annual China report.
“We needed a new bomber for the 21st Century that would allow us to take on much more complicated threats, like the threats that we fear we would one day face from China, Russia, ” said Deborah Lee James, the Air Force secretary when the Raider contract was announced in 2015.
While the Raider may resemble the B-2, once you get inside, the similarities stop, said Kathy Warden, chief executive of Northrop Grumman Corp., which is building the bomber.
“The way it operates internally is extremely advanced compared to the B-2, because the technology has evolved so much in terms of the computing capability that we can now embed in the software of the B-21,” Warden said.
Other changes include advanced materials used in coatings to make the bomber harder to detect, Austin said.
“Fifty years of advances in low-observable technology have gone into this aircraft,” Austin said. “Even the most sophisticated air defense systems will struggle to detect a B-21 in the sky.”
Other advances likely include new ways to control electronic emissions, so the bomber could spoof adversary radars and disguise itself as another object, and use of new propulsion technologies, several defense analysts said.
“It is incredibly low observability,” Warden said. “You’ll hear it, but you really won’t see it.”
Six Raiders are in production. The Air Force plans to build 100 that can deploy either nuclear weapons or conventional bombs, and can be used with or without a human crew. Both the Air Force and Northrop also point to the Raider’s relatively quick development: The bomber went from contract award to debut in seven years. Other new fighter and ship programs have taken decades.
The cost of the bombers is unknown. The Air Force previously put the price at an average cost of $550 million each in 2010 dollars – roughly $753 million today — but it’s unclear how much is actually being spent. The total will depend on how many bombers the Pentagon buys.
“We will soon fly this aircraft, test it, and then move it into production. And we will build the bomber force in numbers suited to the strategic environment ahead,” Austin said.
The undisclosed cost troubles government watchdogs.
“It might be a big challenge for us to do our normal analysis of a major program like this,” said Dan Grazier, a senior defense policy fellow at the Project on Government Oversight. “It’s easy to say that the B-21 is still on schedule before it actually flies. Because it’s only when one of these programs goes into the actual testing phase when real problems are discovered.” That, he said, is when schedules start to slip and costs rise.
The B-2 was also envisioned to be a fleet of more than 100 aircraft, but the Air Force built only 21, due to cost overruns and a changed security environment after the Soviet Union fell. Fewer than that are ready to fly on any given day due to the significant maintenance needs of the aging bomber.
The B-21 Raider, which takes its name from the 1942 Doolittle Raid over Tokyo, will be slightly smaller than the B-2 to increase its range, Warden said. It won’t make its first flight until 2023. However, Warden said Northrop Grumman has used advanced computing to test the bomber’s performance using a digital twin, a virtual replica of the one unveiled Friday.
Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota will house the bomber’s first training program and squadron, though the bombers are also expected to be stationed at bases in Texas and Missouri.
Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican of South Dakota, led the state’s bid to host the bomber program. In a statement, he called it “the most advanced weapon system ever developed by our country to defend ourselves and our allies.”
Northrop Grumman has also incorporated maintenance lessons learned from the B-2, Warden said.
In October 2001, B-2 pilots set a record when they flew 44 hours straight to drop the first bombs in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. The B-2 often does long round-trip missions because there are few hangars globally that can accommodate its wingspan, which limits where it can land for maintenance. The hangars also must be air-conditioned because the Spirit’s windows don’t open and hot climates can cook cockpit electronics.
The new Raider will also get new hangars to accommodate its size and complexity, Warden said.
However, with the Raider’s extended range, ‘it won’t need to be based in-theater,” Austin said. “It won’t need logistical support to hold any target at risk.”
A final noticeable difference was in the debut itself. While both went public in Palmdale, the B-2 was rolled outdoors in 1988 amid much public fanfare. Given advances in surveillance satellites and cameras, the Raider was just partially exposed, keeping its sensitive propulsion systems and sensors under the hangar and protected from overhead eyes.
“The magic of the platform,” Warden said, “is what you don’t see.”
Suicide bomber kills at least six in eastern Congo on Christmas Day | Democratic Republic of the Congo
A suicide bomber attacked a restaurant and bar in Beni on Christmas Day, killing at least six people in the eastern Congolese town where Islamic extremists are known to be active.
Heavy gunfire rang out shortly after the bomb went off, with panicked crowds fleeing the town’s hub.
Gen Sylvain Ekenge, spokesperson for the governor of North Kivu, said security guards had blocked the bomber from entering the crowded bar and so the person detonated the explosives at the entrance.
“We call on people to remain vigilant and to avoid crowded areas during the holiday season,” he said. “In the city and territory of Beni, it is difficult, in these times, to know who is who.”
Rachel Magali had been at the restaurant-bar for about three hours with her sister-in-law and several others when she heard a loud noise outside.
“Suddenly we saw black smoke surrounding the bar and people started to cry,” she told the Associated Press. “We rushed to the exit where I saw people lying down. There were green plastic chairs scattered everywhere and I also saw heads and arms no longer attached. It was really horrible.”
Among the dead were two children, according to Mayor Narcisse Muteba, who is also a police colonel. At least 13 other people were wounded and taken to a local hospital.
“Investigations are under way to find the perpetrators of this terrorist attack,” he told AP.
The town has long been targeted by rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a group that traces its origins to neighbouring Uganda. But an Islamic State affiliate claimed responsibility for two explosions in Beni in June, deepening fears that religious extremism has taken hold there too.
Those explosions included the first known suicide bombing in eastern Congo, a Ugandan man who blew himself up outside a bar.
The Islamist group’s Central Africa province later said that the suicide bomber was targeting Christians. The other explosion that day went off inside a Catholic church, wounding two people.
Residents of the town have repeatedly expressed anger over the ongoing insecurity despite an army offensive and the presence of UN peacekeepers in Beni.
In recent years, the town has also suffered an Ebola epidemic and has seen several smaller outbreaks of the disease.
Boston bomber: Barrett asks DOJ lawyer why Biden admin wants to reinstate death sentence amid execution pause
Justice Amy Coney Barrett pressed a Biden administration lawyer on why it is trying to reinstate the death sentence for Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev even though the attorney general ordered a moratorium on federal executions earlier this year.
“What’s the government’s end game here?” Barrett asked Justice Department lawyer Eric Feigin during a Supreme Court oral argument Wednesday.
Barrett said that if the Biden administration gets its way, Tsarnaev would be “relegated to living under threat of a death sentence that the government doesn’t plan to carry out.”
Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett poses during a group photo of the justices at the Supreme Court in Washington, April 23, 2021. (Erin Schaff/Pool via REUTERS)
(Erin Schaff/Pool via REUTERS)
Feigin responded that circumstances could shift because a reinstated death penalty would not be the end of litigation or activity on Tsarnaev’s case. Plus, he said, the courts should respect the judgment of the jury that sentenced the terrorist to death even if the party in power does not necessarily agree with the idea of the death penalty and might not immediately carry out the sentence.
BOSTON BOMBER CASE: KAVANAUGH, KAGAN CLASH IN RARE TESTY EXCHANGE OVER MITIGATING EVIDENCE
“The sound judgment of 12 of [Tsarnaev’s] peers… should be respected,” Feigin said.
The Wednesday oral arguments in Tsarnaev’s case came after a district court’s 2015 death sentence was overturned by an appeals court over alleged improper handling of the jury’s media consumption and the court’s exclusion of allegedly mitigating evidence during the sentencing phase.
The other justices focused primarily on the allegedly mitigating evidence: that Dzhokhar’s allegedly domineering older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, strongly influenced Dzhokhar to commit the act of terror and that Dzhokhar would not have done so if it weren’t for his brother.
This file photo released April 19, 2013, by the Federal Bureau of Investigation shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted and sentenced to death for carrying out the April 15, 2013, Boston Marathon bombing attack that killed three people and injured more than 260. (FBI via AP, File)
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Tsarnaev’s defense attorneys wanted to bring up evidence during the sentencing phase that Tamerlan may have been involved in a jihad-related triple-murder in 2011 to bolster their case that Tamerlan was the leader among the two and someone whose influence would have been hard for Dzhokhar to resist.
But the district court excluded that evidence due to its alleged weakness, something the defense said was not fair because criminal defendants have a right to present mitigating evidence at sentencing.
The Supreme Court will likely rule in the case by June 2022, when its current term ends.