Washington: The US federal judge in Boston formally sentenced 21-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death for his role in the 2013 Boston marathon bombing attacks and the killing of a police officer when on the run, media reported on Thursday.
Before the court judge read out the ruling, Tsarnaev broke a two-year silence apologising to victims for the bombings he and his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev unleashed at the finish line of the marathon in April 2013, which killed three people and injured 260, Xinhua news agency reported.
"I'd like to now apologise to the victims and survivors," Tsarnaev spoke at the Boston courtroom before the federal judge announced the ruling of sentencing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death.
"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 college student said in his Russian accent, breaking more than two years of public silence.
To the victims, he said: "I pray for your relief, for your healing."
After Tsarnaev said his piece, U.S. District Judge George O'Toole Jr. quoted Shakespeare's line "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 said, telling Tsarnaev 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 willfully and intentionally. You did it on purpose," O'Toole said.
"I sentence you to the penalty of death by execution," he said.
