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Three Charged With Hindering Inquiry Into Boston Attack Three Charged With Hindering Inquiry Into Boston Attack
(about 2 hours later)
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, accused of taking a laptop computer and a backpack containing fireworks belonging to Mr. Tsarnaev. They were perhaps Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s closest friends during his two years at college, an American classmate from high school and two Russian-speaking students from Kazakhstan. The Kazakhs seemingly had money and drove expensive cars. They entertained Mr. Tsarnaev at their off-campus apartment, and he partied with them in New York. One of them lent Mr. Tsarnaev a black BMW after he smashed his Honda Civic in an accident.
The men, Dias Kadyrbayev, 19, and Azamat Tazhayakov, 19, both citizens of Kazakhstan who are in the United States on student visas, appeared in court Wednesday afternoon after having been arrested earlier in the day. And in the wake of the twin bombs that exploded last month at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, federal prosecutors now say, the three showed just how close their friendship was: two of them decided to put a backpack and fireworks linking Mr. Tsarnaev to the blasts into a black trash bag, and toss it into a Dumpster. Prosecutors say the third later lied to investigators when asked about it.
A third man, Robel Phillipos, 19, of Cambridge, Mass., was charged with lying to federal law enforcement officials about what they said was his role in disposing of the material. The two Kazakhs, Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, were charged on Wednesday with destroying evidence to obstruct the federal inquiry into the marathon bombing. Their American friend, Robel K. Phillipos, was charged with lying to impede the investigation.
Mr. Phillipos hung his head in court, prompting Magistrate Judge, Marianne B. Bowler, to instruct him as she read him his rights: “I suggest you pay attention to me rather than looking down.” The story behind their arrest, detailed in lengthy affidavits, paints a vivid portrait of Mr. Tsarnaev in the days after the bombing, and portrays a dorm-room scene of confusion as the three young men, stunned to realize that their friend was being sought as a terrorist, debated whether and how to help him.
All three suspects appeared in court in bluejeans. They were handcuffed and shackled at the ankles. They were taken into federal custody until their next court appearance. And it chillingly laid bare the skill with which Mr. Tsarnaev appears to have concealed plans for the bombing from even his most intimate associates. Three days after the blasts, as photographs of the then unidentified bombing suspects blanketed television and the Internet, Mr. Kadyrbayev sent Mr. Tsarnaev a text message: one of the photographs, he wrote, bore a marked resemblance to him.
Lawyers for the three men said outside the courthouse that their clients had had nothing to do with the bombings and had cooperated fully with the investigation. “lol,” Mr. Tsarnaev coolly replied. “you better not text me.”
“My client had no knowledge of the incident,” said Robert Stahl, who is representing Mr. Kadyrbayev, adding later, “He absolutely denies the charges, as we’ve said from the beginning.” He said his client was “shocked and horrified” by the bombings He added: “come to my room and take whatever you want.”
Mr. Stahl did not deny that his client had taken a backpack with powder in it belonging to Mr. Tsarnaev, but said that his client had told the Federal Bureau of Investigation about it. “He didn’t know the items were involved in the bombing,” Mr. Stahl said. Mr. Kadyrbayev told federal authorities he thought the request was a joke. Only later that evening, he told interrogators, would he come to see it as a thinly veiled plea to cover up his crime.
Mr. Tazhayakov and Mr. Kadyrbayev have been in federal custody for more than a week on allegations they violated their student visas. Mr. Stahl said that Mr. Kadyrbayev was a sophomore engineering major and was in “technical violation of student visa for not regularly attending classes.” Should the three men be found guilty, they would face potentially stiff penalties: up to five years in prison for the two Kazakhs, eight years for Mr. Phillipos, and up to $250,000 fines for each of the three. Mr. Kadyrbayev, 19, and Mr. Tazhayakov, 20, have been held in jail since last week, ostensibly on suspicion of violating their student visas by not attending class at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where they had studied with Mr. Tsarnaev.
Harlan Protass, a lawyer representing Mr. Tazhayakov, said his client “feels horrible and was shocked to hear that someone he knew was involved with the marathon bombing. He has cooperated fully with the authorities and looks forward to the truth coming out in this case. He considers it an honor to be able to study in the united states.” All four men entered classes there in the fall of 2011, but Mr. Phillipos dropped out and returned to Cambridge, where he and Mr. Tsarnaev had attended Cambridge Ringe and Latin High School together. A university spokesman said that Mr. Kadyrbayev was not currently enrolled, and that Mr. Tazhayakov remained a student but had been suspended until the charges against him are  resolved.
Mr. Kadyrbayev and Mr. Tazhayakov are due back in court on May 14. They face a maximum of five years in prison and $250,000 in fines. In one respect, the two Kazakh students seem an odd match for Mr. Tsarnaev and Mr. Phillipos. Sent from oil-rich Kazakhstan to study in the United States, Mr. Tazhayakov and Mr. Kadyrbayev appear to have come from wealthy families. Mr. Kadyrbayev’s Facebook page features photographs of him on beaches in Fort Lauderdale and Dubai. Mr. Tazhayakov’s page indicates he comes from Atyrau, a petroleum center at the mouth of the Ural River. By contrast, the Cambridge homes of both Mr. Tsarnaev and Mr. Phillipos are hard-worn apartment houses in working-class neighborhoods.
Derege M. Demissie, the lawyer representing Mr. Phillipos, who was arrested Wednesday and charged separately with making false statements, said that his client was innocent and that the details would come out in court. He is due back in court on Monday and faces a maximum sentence of 8 years and a $250,000 fine. But the four quickly became close after starting classes, the affidavit and interviews with friends suggest, in part because Mr. Tsarnaev and the two Kazakh students all spoke fluent Russian. Mr. Tazhayakov struck up a friendship with Mr. Tsarnaev first, and appeared the closest to him, said Jason Rowe, a sophomore who was Mr. Tsarnaev’s freshman dorm roommate.
Two explosives detonated April 15 near the finish line of the marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 260 others. A Cambridge friend of Mr. Tsarnaev said their friendship began to ebb after Mr. Tsarnaev met the two Kazakhs. Photographs posted online suggest a deepening relationship with the foreign students; in one undated shot, Mr. Tsarnaev drapes an arm over a broadly smiling Mr. Kadyrbayev as the two sit at a kitchen table, plates of food laid out before them. Despite dropping out of school and returning to Cambridge, Mr. Phillipos also appears to have become fast friends with the Kazakh students, visiting them frequently in the apartment they shared in New Bedford, about three miles from the Dartmouth campus.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, are suspected of having set off the bombs. Tamerlan, 26, was killed in a shootout with the police, while Dzhokhar was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction. Reporting was contributed by Ian Lovett and Jess Bidgood in Boston; Michael S. Schmidt in Washington; William K. Rashbaum and Serge F. Kovaleski in New York; Kitty Bennett in St. Petersburg, Fla.
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.
The three men charged on Wednesday began attending the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth in 2011, at the same time as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Mr. Tsarnaev became particularly close to Mr. Kadyrbayev and Mr. Tazhayakov, who would frequently visit his family members, an affidavit filed in the case said.
Mr. Kadyrbayev told the authorities that he suspected that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had been involved in the marathon bombings when he went to his friend’s dorm room with the others three days after the attacks and noticed that several tubes that had previously contained fireworks had been emptied of their powder.
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.