Daily United States News : Dzhokhar Tsarnaev 'radicalized' by Anwar al-Awlaki: expert

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Tuesday, March 24, 2015, 12:54 PM

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Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim cleric, was killed in 2011 during a U.S. drone strike in Yemen.

Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a follower of radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki — as well as his big brother.

That was the testimony Tuesday of a terrorism expert who said Tsarnaev could not have been “radicalized” and turned into a jihadi solely by his older sibling Tamerlan.

Matthew Levitt, a former deputy assistant secretary and Chief of the Intelligence Branch at the U.S. Treasury, said he reached this conclusion after comparing the contents of Tsarnaev’s computer with the note he wrote while hiding from authorities in a dry-docked boat.

“I think it would have been remarkable to only come from conversations given the direct parallels to the text,” Levitt said in Boston federal court. “You might have gotten some general ideas, but what was striking to me is how close the parallels were to the written text.”

In fact, Levitt said, Tsarnaev wrote nearly verbatim rehashes of statements that were made by al-Awlaki or pulled from the Al Qaeda in the Saudi Arabian Peninsula magazine, Inspire.

In his note, Tsarnaev wrote that the April 15, 2013 bombings that left three dead and injured scores more was payback for U.S. attacks in Muslim countries.

FILE PHOTOS PROVIDED BY THE LOWELL SUN AND THE FBI. AP PROVIDES ACCESS TO THIS PUBLICLY DISTRIBUTED HANDOUT PHOTO PROVIDED BY FBI Uncredited/AP

Tamerlan Tsarnaev (l.) and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (r.), the latter of whom is on trial for the pairs bombing at the Boston Marathon in 2013.

Charles Krupa/AP

Emergency responders at the scene of the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013.

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“You can show direct parallels between what’s on those devices and the defendant's own writings,” said Levitt. “At the end of the day, if a person is radicalized to the point of killing civilians, you've checked that box of radicalization no matter how it happens.”

Al-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim cleric, was killed in 2011 by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen.

Lawyers for Tsarnaev, 21, do not deny he took part in the bombings. But they claim his brother, who was killed during a shoot-out by police, was the mastermind.

Prosecutors are expected to wrap up their case sometime this week.

Meanwhile, a Tamerlan Tsarnaev pal was expected to plead guilty Tuesday to a reduced charge of lying to the FBI.

Jane Flavell Collins/AP

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (c.), seen in a courtroom sketch from his trial.

Khairullozhon Matanov fibbed when investigators questioned him about the friendship and deleted incriminating information from his computer, prosecutors said.

It was not immediately clear if Matanov would be called to testify about Tsarnaev, a Chechen immigrant who faces the death penalty.

When Tsarnaev’s federal terrorism trial is finished, he faces a separate trial in nearby Middlesex County for the murder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus cop Sean Collier.

Tsarnaev was indicted for the Collier killing in June 2013. His lawyers insist Tamerlan fatally shot the cop in the days after the deadly bombings.

csiemaszko@nydailynews.com

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