WASHINGTON, October 7 (RIA Novosti) – Massachusetts prosecutors on Monday obtained a state warrant for accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in order to charge him with the murder of a local police officer killed during a frantic manhunt in the days following the deadly twin blasts, The Boston Globe reported.
“It is the intention of the Middlesex District Attorney that the defendant stand trial for these charges in Middlesex County,” District Attorney Marian T. Ryan’s office said in a statement.
Middlesex County prosecutors accuse Tsarnaev, 20, of murdering Sean Collier, a police officer at the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), while he and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were the focus of a chaotic police manhunt three days after the April 15 bombing that killed three people and injured more than 260.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed a day later during a shootout with police during the manhunt, while Dzhokhar was taken into custody after eluding police for hours by hiding in a boat parked behind a house.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is currently in federal custody awaiting trial on murder and terrorism-related charges, but the country prosecutors are seeking to try him on state charges related to the murder of the MIT officer.
The brothers’ family roots lie in the restive North Caucasus region in southern Russia.
Prosecutors’ decision to seek the warrant at Monday’s hearing, which was not attended by Tsarnaev, is aimed at ensuring that he eventually is brought to state court to be arraigned for the crime, the Globe reported.
He cannot be arraigned without being present in the courtroom, but federal prosecutors are likely to “decline to deliver” Tsarnaev to the Middlesex Superior Courthouse for arraignment, Ryan’s office said in the statement Monday.
Capital punishment is barred in Massachusetts, but Tsarnaev has been indicted on federal charges, including using a weapon of mass destruction, which could carry the death penalty upon conviction. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him.
