Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's Father on Death Sentence: 'We Will Fight Until the End'

Tsarnaev's family talks to ABC News exclusively.

ByABC News
May 15, 2015, 5:14 PM

— -- "We will fight until the end," Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's father told ABC News by phone after Tsarnaev was sentenced to death today for the Boston Marathon bombings.

"What a parent can feel at such moment? It is hard," Dzhokhar's father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said from Dagestan, Russia. "Hope exists always. We had hope and still do."

Anzor Tsarnaev's brother, Saeed Tsarnaev, said they will appeal.

Saeed Tsarnaev blamed the lawyers for giving the family hope and said they are all "very worried" about Dzhokhar. He called the decision a "big tragedy" for the family and "insulting to our name."

Anzor Tsarnaev's sister, Maret Tsarnaeva, said it is predictable that Dzhokhar would receive a death sentence, but added that it makes no difference whether he gets life in prison or the death sentence. She said the family will fight to prove Dzhokhar is not guilty.

Heda Saratova, a Chechen human rights activist and representative for Tsarnaev's parents, told ABC News by phone: "I feel pain, it is awful, it is a big tragedy. But I hope that not everything is still lost for Dzhokhar."

The jury today found death the penalty was "appropriate" for six of the 17 death penalty eligible counts against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Tsarnaev was convicted by the same jury of seven women and five men last month of all 30 counts related to the deadly April 15, 2013 bombing. Three people were killed, including an 8-year-old boy, and another 260 were injured when Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, detonated twin explosive devices near the finish line of the marathon.

Three days later, the brothers murdered MIT police officer Sean Collier.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police four days after the explosions.