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PRAGUE (Reuters) – US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said on Sunday that the gunman who stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue and killed 11 worshipers was a coward and the "worst pretext for a man." you could never find. "
"If there is a responsible person, this person, I will not even call him a man, he was the poorest excuse for a man you could ever find, who would use a weapon in a house of unarmed cult of the innocent, "Mattis told a group of journalists who accompanied him to Prague.
"He's a coward and he's not a man within the definition we use in the Department of Defense," Mattis said.
Robert Bowers, 46, of Pittsburgh, was arrested after a shootout with a SWAT team on Saturday. Federal prosecutors charged him with 29 counts of indictment, including violence and firearms, and violation of US civil rights legislation.
"It is difficult for the neighborhood, for the members of this synagogue and for all those who believe in freedom of religion, it is one of our most fundamental rights on which our country was founded", said Mattis.
Earlier, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions had said federal prosecutors could seek the death penalty.
Bowers had published numerous antisemitic articles online, including a Saturday morning. In another case, he criticized US President Donald Trump for doing nothing to prevent an "infestation" of the United States by Jews.
Mattis was also questioned about the decision to send American troops to the Mexican border. He added that preparations were underway to send troops and that construction equipment was already being moved.
US President Trump solved the problem of illegal immigration two weeks before the parliamentary elections. Addressing a caravan of Central American migrants, Trump wrote on Twitter Thursday that he was "taking the army out for this national emergency. They will be arrested!"
(Report by Idrees Ali, edited by David Evans)
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