The author of the attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, the worst anti-Semitic attack in the history of the United States, and for which he incurs the death penalty, was found guilty this Friday of murder, reported the US press.
Robert Bowers, a 50-year-old trucker, was accused of having committed 11 murders on October 27, 2018 at the Tree of Life synagogue in that western Pennsylvania city, aggravated by the qualification of an anti-Semitic act.
This trial will now enter a second phase to determine if the culprit will be sentenced to death or life imprisonment by the Federal Court of Pennsylvania, according to reports by the television networks CNN and ABC and The New York Times.
Bowers was indicted on 63 counts, and according to the Pittsburgh court press, the jury deliberated for about five hours to reach their verdict.
In addition to the conviction for the crimes committed, the central issue of this two-part trial is related to the death penalty, which could be imposed by the US federal court.
During the pretrial phase, Robert Bowers’ lawyers proposed, to no avail, that Bowers plead “guilty” in exchange for guarantees that his client would not be sentenced to death, which the US Department of Justice refused.
On October 27, 2018, Bowers stormed into Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue armed with three handguns and a semi-automatic assault rifle.
Shouting “all Jews must die”, fire opened and killed 11 people, among them a 97-year-old devotee, in full shabbat ceremony, in a historic Jewish neighborhood of Pittsburgh, perpetrating the most deadly attack against the Jewish community ever occurred in the U.S.
Before that, he had posted racist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant messages on a far-right social network.
The then President of the United States, Republican Donald Trump, requested the death penalty, a request followed by the Department of Justice at the time and confirmed after the start of the term of the current president, Democrat Joe Biden, on January 20, 2021. .
But after the candidate Biden promised, in 2020, to abolish the death penalty on a national scale, this sentence reignited the debate around this supreme punishment that is still practiced in many US federal states.
As early as 2019, the US Attorney in Pittsburgh warned that he would seek the death penalty for Robert Bowers, citing his “lack of remorse” and “his hatred and contempt” for Jews.
During the trial sessions, which began in late May, defense attorney Judy Clarke admitted that her client was, in fact, the man who shot the Jews.
“It is useless to seek meaning in a senseless act,” he defended, seeking, above all, to save Bowers’ life instead of claiming his innocence.
This sentence occurs in a context of increasing racist and anti-Semitic acts in the United States, which reached the highest level in the last 30 years, according to data from the federal police, the FBI, cited in April by The Washington newspaper. Mail.
According to the North American anti-Semitic organization Anti-Defamation League, the country witnessed in 2021 a record number of 2,717 anti-Semitic acts (aggressions, verbal attacks, destruction of material goods, etc.), representing an increase of 34%. in a year.
In 2022, this association recorded 3,697 anti-Semitic acts (36% more in one year), an unprecedented number since 1979, the Washington Post highlighted.
Source: TSF
