A note written by Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as he hid inside a boat contained themes of global jihad similar to those found in extremist materials on his computer, a terrorism expert testified Monday at his federal death penalty trial.

In the note, scrawled in pencil and carved in wood on the inside walls of the boat, Tsarnaev condemned U.S. actions in Muslim countries and asked Allah to make him a "shaheed," a martyr, said Matthew Levitt, a terrorism expert at The Washington Institute, a think tank that focuses on U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Levitt said many of the ideas included in Tsarnaev's note are contained in lectures by Anwar al-Awlaki - an America-born Muslim cleric suspected of being a terrorist and killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011 - and writings in the al-Qaida publication Inspire magazine, both of which were found on Tsarnaev's computer. In one Inspire article shown to the jury, titled "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom," the instructions say a pressure cooker "should be placed in crowded areas and left to blow up" and "More than one of these could be planted to explode at the same time."

Two pressure-cooker bombs were planted by Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, near the finish line of the 2013 marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 260.

Prosecutors say Tsarnaev made it clear in the note he wrote in the boat that the brothers saw the attack as retaliation for U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died three days after the bombings following a shootout with police and being run over by Dzhokhar during an escape. Dzhokhar was found more than 18 hours later hiding in a boat parked in a yard in Watertown.

During opening statements, Tsarnaev's lawyer acknowledged that he participated in the bombings but portrayed Tamerlan, 26, as the mastermind who recruited his younger brother, then 19, to help him

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