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U.S. Detains 3 in Connection With Boston Bombings Three Charged With Hindering Inquiry Into Boston Attack
(about 2 hours later)
BOSTON — Three additional people have been taken into custody for actions carried out after the Boston Marathon bombings, a federal law enforcement official said Wednesday. BOSTON — Two onetime classmates of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, were charged on Wednesday with conspiring to obstruct justice and destroy evidence for throwing away a laptop computer and a backpack containing fireworks belonging to Mr. Tsarnaev.
The names of the three have not been released, but at least two of them are believed to be current or former students at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where one of the bombing suspects, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, had been also been a student, a federal official said. Two of the three have been in the custody of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency since Friday, federal officials said. The men, Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, both 19 and citizens of Kazakhstan in the United States on student visas, are scheduled to appear in court Wednesday afternoon, the Justice Department said.
Two explosives detonated April 15 near the finish line of the marathon killed three people and injured more than 260 others. A third man, Robel Phillipos, 19, of Cambridge, Mass., was charged with lying to federal law enforcement officials during an investigation of the bombing, according to a criminal complaint charging the men.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, are suspected of having set off the bombs. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a subsequent shootout with the police, while Dzhokhar, 19, was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction. He was transferred last week from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston to a locked medical facility for male prisoners at Fort Devens, after suffering multiple gunshot wounds. Two explosives detonated April 15 near the finish line of the marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 260 others.
Last week, investigators searching for evidence in the bombing inquiry combed through garbage at the Crapo Hill Landfill in New Bedford, Mass., near the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. They were looking for a laptop computer belonging to one of the brothers. It is unclear whether the laptop has been located, but investigators have said they believe that the computer may have been thrown out. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, are suspected of having set off the bombs. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed after an encounter with the police, while Dzhokhar was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction. He was transferred last week from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where he was being treated for multiple gunshot wounds, to a locked medical facility for male prisoners at Fort Devens.

Katharine Q. Seelye reported from Boston, Michael S. Schmidt from Washington and William K. Rashbaum from New York. Reporting was contributing by Serge F. Kovaleski and Timothy Williams from New York.

Last week investigators searching for evidence in the bombing inquiry combed through garbage at the Crapo Hill Landfill in New Bedford, Mass., near the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth campus. They were looking for a laptop computer belonging to one of the brothers. It is unclear whether the laptop has been located, but investigators have said they believe that the computer may have been thrown out.
On Tuesday, President Obama offered measured support for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s handling of a tip from Russian intelligence about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, saying a review would be conducted to determine if more could have been done to prevent the attack.
“Based on what I’ve seen so far, the F.B.I. performed its duties. Department of Homeland Security did what it was supposed to be doing,” Mr. Obama said at a White House news conference. “But this is hard stuff.”
The president suggested that the brothers were “self-radicalized” and therefore harder to catch than terrorists who are part of a large network. He said Russian officials had been “very cooperative” since the bombings , as American investigators have traveled to Dagestan in southern Russia to try to reconstruct Tamerlan’s activities during a six-month visit last year.
Some members of Congress have suggested that the F.B.I. failed to follow up adequately after receiving a warning in March 2011 about Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother, Zubeidat, whom Russian intelligence had reportedly overheard talking about jihad on the telephone. The warning, according to the F.B.I., said that Tamerlan was a follower of radical Islam, had changed drastically and planned to travel to Russia to connect with underground groups.
Mr. Obama said that after the Russian warning, federal agents “had not only investigated the older brother; they interviewed the older brother. They concluded that there were no signs that he was engaging in extremist activity.”
F.B.I. investigators have continued to focus on Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s widow, Katherine Russell, to see whether she played any role in the attack or in helping him and his brother try to cover up their actions, knowingly or unknowingly.
After finding traces of female DNA and a fingerprint on bomb remnants, technicians were checking for matches with Ms. Russell and several other people. Ms. Russell’s lawyer said Tuesday that she “will continue to meet with law enforcement, as she has done for many hours over the past week, and provide as much assistance to the investigation as she can.”
But two law enforcement officials said she had stopped cooperating with the authorities in recent days. “Her and her lawyer have now clammed up,” one of the officials said on Tuesday afternoon.
That has heightened the suspicions of investigators, one of the officials said. Meanwhile, the lawyers for Ms. Russell said in a statement that she had been told by officials from the Massachusetts medical examiner’s office that they were prepared to release Mr. Tsarnaev’s remains. The statement said it was Ms. Russell’s “wish that his remains be released to the Tsarnaev family, and we will communicate her wishes to the proper authorities.”
“Katherine and her family continue to be deeply saddened by the harm that has been caused,” the statement said. “They mourn for the loss of life and the terrible consequences these events have had for those who have been injured and for their families.”
In Russia, officials denied news reports that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been watched during his visit to Dagestan last year.
“Tamerlan Tsarnaev was not under the surveillance of the Center for Combating Extremism, or other police agencies,” said Fatina Ubaidatova, a spokeswoman for Dagestan’s Interior Ministry. “He did not commit any offenses in Dagestan, according to our sources. Police do not intervene in law-abiding citizens’ private lives.”
American experts on Russian security measures in Dagestan expressed skepticism about the assertion. Because Mr. Tsarnaev had already been flagged as potentially dangerous, they said it was highly likely that he was watched while in Makhachkala, the regional capital.
In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Mr. Tsarnaev’s parents, Zubeidat and Anzor, rejected reports that their son had been seen meeting with militant suspects in Dagestan. The newspaper Novaya Gazeta, citing an unidentified official in the anti-extremism unit of Dagestan’s Interior Ministry, reported that intelligence services had seen Tamerlan meeting with Mahmoud Mansur Nidal, a militant suspect who was killed on May 19 after a standoff with Russian authorities in Makhachkala.
“I have never heard this name from the mouth of my son,” Mrs. Tsarnaeva said in a telephone interview. “He never met with any Mahmoud, and I don’t know what all this talk is about.”
She said that she was certain that Tamerlan had not connected with underground groups because “he never went out anywhere.” She said he was under scrutiny from his father after he traveled from the United States to join Tamerlan on May 2 — though that was four months after Tamerlan reached Dagestan.
“His father says that he protected him as a hen protects its egg,” she said. “He came, and he was a very open boy and very naïve.”

Katharine Q. Seelye reported from Boston, Michael S. Schmidt from Washington and William K. Rashbaum from New York. Reporting was contributing by Serge F. Kovaleski and Timothy Williams from New York; Scott Shane from Washington; Ellen Barry from Moscow; and Andrew Roth from Makhachkala, Russia.