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**UPDATE**

Rolling Stone Magazine has no regrets about their latest cover image. 

Following a trending Twitter topic this morning calling for the boycott of the magazine, the editors have responded with a short written statement about their decision to run a cover image of alleged Boston bomber check it out below: 

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After months of silence and minimal public developments, the wink and smile Dzhokhar “Jahar” Tsarnaev directed to his family in his first court appearance last week reopened the wounds of a nation. 

Last week, the sole surviving suspect of the Boston Marathon Bombings made his first appearance in court since the April incident with a swollen jaw and his arm in a sling, but that isn’t the photo Rolling Stone magazine is using to illustrate the life of Jahar.

The magazine, which historically features the biggest acts in music, opted to use a photo common to us all for their latest cover story, “Jahar’s World.”

The cover art features the photo with a caption that reads “The Bomber,” and the magazine promises to reveal “[h]ow a popular, promising student was failed by his family, fell into radical Islam, and became a monster.”

The teaser description of the issue that will hit stands on Friday reads: 

In the new issue of Rolling Stone, contributing editor Janet Reitman delivers a deeply reported account of the life and times of Boston bomber Jahar Tsarnaev. Reitman spent the last two months interviewing dozens of sources – childhood and high school friends, teachers, neighbors and law enforcement agents, many of whom spoke for the first time about the case – to deliver a riveting and heartbreaking account of how a charming kid with a bright future became a monster.

The article teaser continues on to provide 5 things they learned about the bombing suspect through the investigative piece, but the real public outrage is coming not from the yet-to-be-released investigative article, but from the fact that the publication chose to “glorify” Jahar on their cover, “giving him the rock star treatment.”

The controversial cover has riled up the social media masses, as Boycott Rolling Stone” became a trending Twitter topic just hours after the cover was teased. 

We have to wonder, would the same reaction come from a TIME cover? Critics are calling the cover glorification of a terrorist, but this isn’t the first time one was featured on a magazine. The Oklahoma City bomber made the cover of TIME and so did America’s #1 enemy, terrorist Bin Laden.

What are your thoughts? 

SOURCE: Rolling Stone