Ex-in-law testifies from Kazakhstan in Boston Marathon trial

A former brother-in-law of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev testified Wednesday from Kazakhstan about the role of a conservative Muslim convert who steered Tsarnaev’s older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, toward a stricter version of Islam. Elmirza Khozhugov, the former husband of Tsarnaev’s sister Ailina Tsarnaeva, testified on live video for the defence from the U.S. Embassy in Almaty. The Tsarnaev family lived in the Dagestan region of Russia, near Chechnya, and in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan before moving to the U.S. in 2002, when Dzhokhar was 8.

He listened to Tamerlan. He went along any time Tamerlan would say, ‘Let’s go do this and that.’

Elmirza Khozhugov

A federal jury will soon decide whether Dzhokhar, now 21, should be executed or sentenced to life in prison for the 2013 bombings that killed three people and wounded more than 260. The defence is trying to show that Dzhokhar was heavily influenced by his radicalized 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, whom they call the mastermind of the plot. Tamerlan was killed days after the bombing during a getaway attempt.

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