Boston bombing suspect says US wars provoked attack

The surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect says that US-led wars have provoked his role in connection with the twin blasts, a report says.

Investigators said 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has specifically cited the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as major influences for his role in the bombings during the Boston Marathon on April 15, the Washington Post stated on Tuesday.

Officials added that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his deceased brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan, do not appear to have been directed by a foreign terrorist organization.

Experts argued that the pressure cooker-type bombs used in the Boston Marathon attacks resembled weapons used by the US military including antipersonnel land mines and internationally-banned cluster munitions, as bits of maiming steel are used to cause maximum widespread casualties and structural damage.

This came as NBC special correspondent Tom Brokaw highlighted on Sunday the blowback of US-led wars on the public, saying that the roots of anti-American terrorism are US drone attacks.

“We also have to examine the use of drones that the United States is involved in and – and there are a lot of civilians who are innocently killed in a drone attack in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq,” said the prominent journalist.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama has recently called for an expansion of drone operations in Pakistan and other countries.

On April 22, the US charged Dzhokhar Tsarnaev with one count of using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, namely an improvised explosive device (IED), against persons and property resulting in death, and one count of malicious destruction of property by means of an explosive device resulting in death.

On April 15, the twin bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon killed three people and injured more than 250.

“We have to work a lot harder at a motivation here. What prompts a young man to come to this country and still feel alienated from it, to go back to Russia and do whatever he did? And I don’t think we’ve examined that enough,” Brokaw concluded.