Suspect in Boston marathon bombing goes on trial

Boston: Lawyers for the student on trial for the Boston marathon bombings bluntly admitted Wednesday that he was responsible for the attacks, but insisted he had been led astray by his brother.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could face the death penalty and -- while survivors recounted the carnage in graphic detail -- the defense sought to put the bulk of the blame on his slain older sibling.

Nearly two years after what was the worst attack on US soil since 9/11, the trial got under way in a federal court packed with victims, survivors and the media.

Prosecutors said Tsarnaev carried out the attacks to avenge the deaths of fellow Muslims overseas after learning how to build pressure-cooker bombs through an Al-Qaeda publication.

The Kyrgyzstan-born US citizen faces the death penalty if convicted of the bombings which killed three people and wounded 264, on April 15, 2013.

In a dramatic opening statement, Tsarnaev's defense attorney Judy Clarke said that her client and his older brother Tamerlan, who was killed while on the run, carried out the "senseless, horribly misguided" attacks.

She told jurors bluntly: "It was him."

"We do not and will not at any point sidestep or attempt to sidestep Dzhokhar's responsibility for his actions," she said.

Instead Clarke appealed on the jury to hold their "hearts and minds open" for the second half of the trial focused on the sentencing.

She said her client had been radicalized by his elder brother and that it was 26-year-old Tamerlan who had bought the bomb ingredients online and who had shot and killed a police officer on the run.

Brother's influence

"It was Tamerlan Tsarnaev who self-radicalized. It was Dzhokhar who followed," she said.

Government prosecutors painted the picture of a cold, callous killer who calmly shopped for milk just 20 minutes later as paramedics battled in vain to save a mortally wounded eight-year-old boy.

Assistant US attorney William Weinreb focused the court on the horror unleashed when the two pressure cooker bombs, packed with thousands of tiny pieces of shrapnel, exploded near the race finish line.

He showed the jury pictures of victims Krystle Marie Campbell, Lingzi Lu and Martin Richard in happier days, describing in graphic detail the terrible injuries that caused them to bleed to death on the sidewalk.

"The purpose of this bomb was to shred flesh, shatter bones, set people on fire," Weinreb told the court. "The purpose was to kill and maim as many people as possible."

Tsarnaev showed no emotion, looking straight ahead or resting one finger against his lip, his hair a mop of dark brown unruly curls, and wearing a dark blazer and a pin-stripped shirt.

Weinreb said that Tsarnaev seemed to be an ordinary University of Massachusetts student but was reading terrorist literature in private as early as 2011.

It was that literature that convinced him to kill Americans to punish them for killing Muslims overseas and to earn him a place in paradise, he said.

Inside a boat, the bolthole where he was arrested four days after the attacks, Tsarnaev left a message that appeared to justify the attacks by criticizing of the US government over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Al-Qaeda propaganda

An almost complete set of Al-Qaeda's English-language magazine Inspire -- which taught the brothers how to make their bombs -- audio lectures and songs were found on his laptop, iPod and on CDs in his car, he said.

Tsarnaev, who became a US citizen in 2012, has pleaded not guilty to 30 charges over the attacks, the subsequent killing of a police officer, a car jacking and shootout with police while on the run.

Tamerlan was killed in the shootout, and run over by his brother who eventually surrendered on April 19 after being discovered in the boat in a suburban backyard.

Seventeen of the 30 charges against him carry the possibility of a death penalty under federal law.

Survivors of the attacks, called by government prosecutors, sobbed as they narrated how jubilation at being at the race degenerated into blood, screams, chaos and injuries that cost some of them their legs.

Sidney Corcoran, who was a 17-year-old at high school when she went to watch her aunt in the marathon, spoke of how she believed she would die or live as an orphan after the attacks.

"I was bleeding from one of my main arteries, I was bleeding out and I had minutes," she told the court calmly.

"I was dying. The blood was leaving my body. I was bleeding out."

The jury of eight men and 10 women was sworn in on Tuesday after a two-month selection process delayed by historic snowfall and repeated attempts to move the trial elsewhere, rejected by District Judge George O'Toole.