Three University of Massachusetts Dartmouth students on Wednesday were charged with federal crimes related to the Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and injured about 200 others on April 15.
One of the young men, UMass Dartmouth student Azamat Tazhayakov, 19, was suspended as a result of the charges, the Boston Globe reported.
The two other young men, Robel Phillipos and Dias Kadyrbayev, both 19, left the university after the fall semester; Phillipos withdrew for reasons that remain unclear, while Kadyrbayev was expelled for poor grades, the Globe reported.
Phillipos was charged with making false statements to law enforcement officials in a terrorism investigation, while Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov were charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice by plotting to dispose of a laptop computer and a backpack containing fireworks belonging to bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Globe reported.
Tsarnaev, 19, the main suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, was also a student at UMass Dartmouth. They were all friends. Phillipos is from Cambridge while the other two are originally from Kazakhstan, the Globe reported.
Before the criminal charges were announced, Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev appeared before a federal immigration judge on charges they overstayed their student visas, the newspaper reported.
Tazhayakov, an economics major, had his visa terminated on Jan. 4, but he was allowed to reenter the country on Jan. 20 in New York. …
Tazhayakov was enrolled until this week, but university officials suspended him today when the criminal charges were filed.
… The trio told investigators that Kadyrbaev removed Tsarnaev’s backpack, which contained fireworks that had been opened and emptied of gunpowder, from Tsarnaev’s dorm room on the evening of April 18, shortly after the FBI released photos of the two bombing suspects (which the FBI later identified as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan), according to an affidavit by Special Agent Scott Cieplik attached to the complaint.
Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov both admitted they agreed to throw away the backpack after concluding from news reports that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev must be one of the bombers. Kadyrbayev decided to remove the backpack from Tsarnaev’s room “to help his friend Tsarnaev avoid trouble,” the affidavit said.
Kadyrbayev allegedly later threw the backpack in a dumpster at the New Bedford apartment complex where Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov lived.
The backpack was taken away by a garbage truck, but was recovered last week inside a black garbage bag by the FBI at a New Bedford landfill, the affidavit said.
The affidavit also alleged that Phillipos changed his story, saying at first that he had never gone to Tsarnaev’s dorm room but in a fourth interview admitting that he had joined the two others and gone to the room and taken the backpack. He said he had discussed with the two others what to do with the backpack but had fallen asleep and, upon awakening, discovered the backpack was gone.
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IMAGE: Taken from Dias Kadyrbayev’s webpage
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