Will death sentence make bomber a martyr?

Associated Press

BOSTON

Does putting Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death make him a martyr for the cause?

Some analysts worry that Tsarnaev’s eventual execution could inspire more attacks. But others, including Islamic leaders, say no: Tsarnaev was more of a lone wolf with a low profile among radical jihadists and no known links to the Islamic State group, al-Qaida or other influential terror organizations.

It will take years, possibly decades, of appeals before Tsarnaev – sentenced Friday by a federal jury in Boston to death by lethal injection – is executed.

The martyrdom question surfaced during his trial for his role in the 2013 attack that killed three spectators and wounded more than 260 others near the marathon finish line. Tsarnaev’s defense had argued for life imprisonment as a better option because it offered “no martyrdom”; prosecutors insisted he had a chance to die as a martyr during a firefight with police trying to capture him but instead hid in a boat.

Yet the notes Tsarnaev scrawled inside that boat condemned U.S. actions in Muslim countries and asked Allah to make him a “shaheed,” or martyr.

Matthew Levitt, a former FBI counterterrorism intelligence analyst and now a terrorism expert at The Washington Institute, said the death sentence will resonate differently around the world.

“Are jihadists going to look to him as some kind of martyr figure? The answer is likely yes. To a certain extent, they already do,” said Levitt, who testified for the prosecution at Tsarnaev’s trial.

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which bills itself as the nation’s largest Muslim civil-rights and advocacy organization, isn’t convinced the death sentence will make Tsarnaev a martyr.

“This case really hasn’t been on the radar screens of extremist groups around the world,” he said. “These were just loners.”