Boston marathon rocked by deadly bombings

On April 15, three people were killed and more than 260 injured when two pressure-cooker bombs detonated at the finish line of the annual Boston Marathon.

Shortly after the bombings, the FBI released images of two suspects at the marathon, later identified as Chechen-born brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev.

Dzhokar or ‘Jahar’, 20, was a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth who had become a naturalized US citizen seven months before the bombings.

Tamerlan, 26, was a promising wrestler who had reportedly radicalized himself in fundamental Islam. He was married to Muslim convert, Katherine Russell, with whom he had fathered a daughter.

Following the April 15 attacks, it is believed Dzhokar Tsarnaev returned to his college dorm room where he tweeted to the people of Boston to ‘stay safe’.

He remained on the college campus, using the gym, sleeping in his dorm and partying with his friends, until April 18 when police released photographs of him and his brother as suspects.

The siblings are then accused of murdering MIT Police Officer Sean Collier before travelling to the Boston neighbourhood of Allston and carjacking an SUV.

The car’s owner managed to escape when the pair stopped to refuel, and notified police who were then able to track the vehicle using the man’s mobile phone and the car’s antitheft tracking device.

The brothers went on to engage in a late-night gun battle with police in nearby Watertown that ended with Dzhokar running over and killing his elder brother Tamerlan.

Watertown went into lockdown the next day, as thousands of law enforcement officers embarked on a door-to-door search for Dzhokhar, who had escaped police.

On April 19, he was captured after the lockdown was lifted and a homeowner noticed streaks of blood on a boat in his backyard.

Tsarnaev suffered multiple gunshot wounds including one to the face, a skull fracture, and various other injuries when he was captured hiding in the overturned boat.

A confessional note was found in the boat and appeared to reveal the bombers' motive.

Dzhokar, reportedly angry over America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, allegedly wrote, "When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims."

He has since pleaded not guilty to 30 federal charges, including using a weapon of mass destruction and murdering a law enforcement official.

The US government is still deciding whether to pursue the death penalty for the retaliation attack.

Upon learning of the bombings, Katherine Russell’s American family denied any knowledge of Tamerlan’s fundamental beliefs.

Her mother Judith addressed the media on behalf of her family.

“In the aftermath of the Patriots’ Day horror, we know that we never really knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev,” she said.

Since his death, Tamerlan Tsarnaev has also been named as a participant in an earlier triple homicide in Waltham.

Friend and fellow wrestler Ibragim Todashev, who was subsequently shot to death while being questioned by authorities, told investigators Tsarnaev participated in the killing in which three men were found in an apartment with their necks slit and their bodies reportedly covered with marijuana.

One of the victims was a boxer and friend of Tsarnaev.

In August, Rolling Stone magazine was accused of glamorizing terrorism when they featured the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect on the cover.