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Boston bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev breaks silence to apologize

(The Christian Science Monitor) Dzhokhar Tsarnaev spoke for the first time in court on the day of his sentencing, at the end of a months-long death penalty trial and after dozens of his victims and their families addressed the court.

“Immediately after the bombing, which I am guilty of—if there’s any lingering doubt about that, let there be no more—I’ve learned of some of the victims, their names, their faces, their age,” Tsarnaev said. “And throughout this trial more of those victims were given names, more of those victims had faces. . . . 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.”

A jury convicted Tsarnaev of helping carry out twin bombings at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, with his brother, Tamerlan—an attack that resulted in three deaths and more than 260 injuries. He was also convicted of the murder of a security guard at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech­nology in the days after the bombings. After a second sentencing phase in the trial, the jury sentenced him to death in May.