Although various state criminal charges could be brought against Tsarnaev, the District Attorney for Suffolk County announced at Thursday’s press conference that the appropriate venue for the charges and the trial are in the U.S. District Court House where the press conference took place.
There were earlier reports that the older brother had downloaded violent jihadist material on his computer, but the indictment against Dzokhar Tsarnaev revealed that he had also downloaded jihadist material. That material included instructions on how to make an improvised explosive device, just like the ones used for the Boston Marathon bombings and the ones used the night of April 18-19, during the shootout between the Tsarnaevs and law enforcement.
Other material that was found on Dzokhar Tsarnaev’s computer, according to the indictment, were several jihadist books, including “The Slicing Sword, Against the One Who Forms Allegiances With the Disbelievers and Takes Them as Supporters Instead of Allah, His Messenger and The Believers.”
Tsarnaev also downloaded a publication written by one of the founders of Hamas, Abdullah Azzam, called, “Defense of the Muslim Lands, the First Obligation After Imam.”
Azzam is known as “the Father of Global Jihad.” Azzam actively promoted jihad against all occupiers of Muslim lands. In terrorism expert Steven Emerson‘s 1994 television documentary Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America, Abdullah Azzam is shown urging a New York audience to wage jihad in America, and Azzam explains that jihad “means fighting only, fighting with the sword.”
