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Judgments are pending over the 2018 massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue that left 11 worshipers dead.

Prosecutors have presented closing arguments against a man accused of turning a US synagogue into a “hunting ground” in a 2018 shooting that killed eleven people.

A 50-year-old former truck driver named Robert Bowers faces 63 criminal charges for shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, considered the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in US history. Bowers faces the death penalty if convicted.

But as Bowers’ defense used closing arguments Thursday to cast doubt on his motives, federal prosecutors upheld the truckers’ history of anti-Jewish statements as they pursue a hate crime and obstruction conviction. to religious activity.

“It was filled with hatred of Jews,” prosecutor Mary Hahn said, noting that Bowers had a long history of engaging in and promoting anti-Semitic and white supremacist content online. “That’s what prompted him to act.

Defense attorneys did little to assert that Bowers carried out the attack. In her closing statement, Attorney General Elisa Long acknowledged there was “no justification” for Bowers’ actions and acknowledged the pain survivors had felt.

However, he said, Bowers was not always motivated by anti-Semitic hatred or the disruption of religious activities. Instead, he said, Bowers had been blinded by “absurd and irrational” beliefs about immigration, which he attributed to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). The organization’s slogan is “Strangers welcome. Protect the refugees”.

Long described Bowers as adhering to the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, the idea that white people are replaced by non-white immigrants. He said Bowers placed a Jewish organization at the center of this conspiracy theory.

Racist myths portraying Jews as the masterminds of evil conspiracies have long been a staple of anti-Semitic rhetoric, and prosecutors have dismissed defense arguments indiscriminately.

Attorney Eric Olshan reminded jurors that the attack took place at the “center of the Jewish universe”: the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. He described Bowers as “hunting, looking for Jews to kill”.

Prosecutor Mary Hahn told jurors that Bowers – who was arrested after the shooting that injured five officers – allegedly told law enforcement that “all those Jews should die”.
Many of those killed were elderly, remembered by relatives and friends as wise and kind members of the community.

Earlier this week, jurors heard horrific accounts from survivors of the attack, including a woman who was left speechless when her mother died alongside her during the massacre.
“I just lay on the floor and didn’t move in case he was there or came back. I didn’t want him to know I was alive,” said Andrea Wedner, whose mother 97-year-old Rose Mallinger was killed in the attack.

“I kissed my finger,” Wedner said of his mother’s death, “and ran my finger over his skin.