Boston bomber suspect's 3 friends charged
Published: 2013 May 01 22:38:15 (4423 Views)
Three college friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston Marathon suspect, have been charged with covering up evidence in an attempt to obstruct the investigation into the attack, which killed three people and injured more than 260.
Two Kazakh students and a third man, a US citizen, all 19, are alleged to have disposed of Tsarnaev's laptop and a backpack containing fireworks in the frenzied hours after the names of the two Boston bombing suspects were made public.
Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, both from Kazakhstan, and Robel Phillipos, a US citizen, appeared before a federal judge in a brief court hearing in Boston on Wednesday afternoon.
Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov were charged with conspiring to obstruct justice, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in jail. Phillipos was charged with making false statements to federal investigators, which carries a maximum sentence of eight years.
The three men were all friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who was a student at University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.
His older brother Tamerlan, 26, was killed after a shootout with police in the wake of the Boston bombings.
Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov lived together in the nearby town of New Bedford, in an apartment close to the college.
According to the criminal complaint against Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov, the pair recognised Tsarnaev from pictures released by the authorities four days after the attack.
Kadyrbayev is said to have sent text messages to Tsarnaev, who replied "Lol", "You better not text me", and "Come to my room and take whatever you want".
The complaint alleges the Kazakh pair then went with Phillipos to Tsarnaev's dorm room at Pine Dale Hall. They were let in by Tsarnaev's unnamed roommate, who told them Tsarnaev had left some hours earlier.
After watching a movie in the room, the three are said to have noticed a backpack containing seven red tubes of fireworks, emptied of their explosive powder.
Kadyrbayev, by now sure of Tsarnaev's involvement in the bombings, is said to have taken the decision to remove the backpack "in order to help his friend Tsarnaev avoid trouble".
The trio are also accused of removing Tsarnaev's laptop, which they took in order not to alert the roommate's suspicions about the backpack. They went back to the apartment shared by the two Kazakhs, and Kadyrbayev later threw the backpack into a dumpster.
FBI officers first detained and questioned the trio four days after the Boston bombings. The three were released, but the Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov were later taken back into custody and held by immigration authorities, accused of having overstayed their student visas.
The complaint alleges that Phillipos lied to investigators when he was first questioned, insisting that he had not played any role in the disposal of the evidence. Law enforcement officers later recovered the backpack and its contents from a landfill waste site.
There is nothing in the criminal charge sheet to suggest that the three accused men were involved in planning the marathon bombings on 15 April. Their alleged offences are confined to events after the attacks had taken place.
But in a footnote to the charge sheet, the FBI said that about a month before the bombing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev that he knew how to make a bomb.
- Guardian
Two Kazakh students and a third man, a US citizen, all 19, are alleged to have disposed of Tsarnaev's laptop and a backpack containing fireworks in the frenzied hours after the names of the two Boston bombing suspects were made public.
Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, both from Kazakhstan, and Robel Phillipos, a US citizen, appeared before a federal judge in a brief court hearing in Boston on Wednesday afternoon.
Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov were charged with conspiring to obstruct justice, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in jail. Phillipos was charged with making false statements to federal investigators, which carries a maximum sentence of eight years.
The three men were all friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who was a student at University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.
His older brother Tamerlan, 26, was killed after a shootout with police in the wake of the Boston bombings.
Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov lived together in the nearby town of New Bedford, in an apartment close to the college.
According to the criminal complaint against Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov, the pair recognised Tsarnaev from pictures released by the authorities four days after the attack.
Kadyrbayev is said to have sent text messages to Tsarnaev, who replied "Lol", "You better not text me", and "Come to my room and take whatever you want".
The complaint alleges the Kazakh pair then went with Phillipos to Tsarnaev's dorm room at Pine Dale Hall. They were let in by Tsarnaev's unnamed roommate, who told them Tsarnaev had left some hours earlier.
After watching a movie in the room, the three are said to have noticed a backpack containing seven red tubes of fireworks, emptied of their explosive powder.
Kadyrbayev, by now sure of Tsarnaev's involvement in the bombings, is said to have taken the decision to remove the backpack "in order to help his friend Tsarnaev avoid trouble".
The trio are also accused of removing Tsarnaev's laptop, which they took in order not to alert the roommate's suspicions about the backpack. They went back to the apartment shared by the two Kazakhs, and Kadyrbayev later threw the backpack into a dumpster.
FBI officers first detained and questioned the trio four days after the Boston bombings. The three were released, but the Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov were later taken back into custody and held by immigration authorities, accused of having overstayed their student visas.
The complaint alleges that Phillipos lied to investigators when he was first questioned, insisting that he had not played any role in the disposal of the evidence. Law enforcement officers later recovered the backpack and its contents from a landfill waste site.
There is nothing in the criminal charge sheet to suggest that the three accused men were involved in planning the marathon bombings on 15 April. Their alleged offences are confined to events after the attacks had taken place.
But in a footnote to the charge sheet, the FBI said that about a month before the bombing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev that he knew how to make a bomb.
- Guardian
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