BOSTON, March 17 (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors want to prevent suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from seeing the autopsy photographs of his four alleged victims, unless the pictures are used at his trial, according to court documents filed on Monday.
"Granting Tsarnaev an unlimited right to view the naked and mutilated corpses of the victims would needlessly invade the victims' privacy and expose their families to unnecessary anguish," according to the motion.
Tsarnaev's lawyer, Miriam Conrad, said she had not yet seen the motion and could not comment.
Prosecutors say Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, placed two homemade pressure-cooker bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon last year, killing three people, including an eight-year-old boy, and injuring more than 260 in the worst attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.
Prosecutors say the pair later shot a security guard to death while trying to evade arrest. Tamerlan was killed during the manhunt.
The motion to block Tsarnaev's access to the autopsy photographs is the latest in a flurry of filings ahead of the 20-year-old's November trial on terrorism charges. If convicted, he faces the possibility of execution.
Prosecutors have successfully argued for restrictions to Tsarnaev's ability to communicate with the outside world, after saying he may try to incite other attacks. Rights advocates have said the measures are unnecessary and undermine Tsarnaev's ability to build a defense case with his lawyers.
The Tsarnaev family emigrated to the United States from Russia's restive Chechnya republic a decade ago and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the parents and their four children lived in a small apartment. (Reporting by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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