Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is suing the federal government for what he claims are discriminatory practices.
The 27-year-old is seeking $250,000 in damages from a maximum security prison in Colorado. He claimed in an eight-page lawsuit that his baseball cap and bandanna were confiscated by prison guards “because, by wearing it, [he] was ‘disrespecting’ the FBI and the victims” of the 2013 attack, a charge that Tsarnaev called “unlawful, unreasonable and discriminatory.”
He added: “There is no proof and no evidence to support [the] false accusation.”
The lawsuit, which was initiated on Monday, was rendered “deficient” by a federal judge on Tuesday, who said that the filing was missing a “certified copy of prisoner’s trust fund statement” and a $402 filing fee.
Authorities identified Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, as the men responsible for one of the worst domestic terrorist incidents since the Sept. 11 attacks, detonating two homemade pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line at the 2013 Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.
The attack left three dead and more than 200 wounded.
While Tamerlan was killed in a shootout with police after a five-day manhunt to apprehend the attackers, Dzhokhar was detained and sentenced to death after being found guilty on 30 charges. An appeals court then threw out Tsarnaev’s death sentence in 2020, with the presiding judge claiming that his trial “did not meet the standard” of fairness enshrined in the Constitution.
The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to review the case, calling it “one of the most important terrorism prosecutions in our nation’s history.”
