US Charges Three With Hindering Boston Bombing Investigation

May 01, 2013

by VOA News

The U.S. is charging three young men with hindering its investigation into the deadly Boston Marathon bombings.

Authorities Wednesday arrested two Kazakh nationals and an American who attended the same Massachusetts college as accused bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The U.S. accused all of them of assisting Tsarnaev in the days after the twin April 15 explosions that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.

The Kazakhs, Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, waived bail and will stay in jail at least until their next court appearance. The third suspect, U.S. citizen Robel Phillipos, has yet to make his first court appearance.

All three men are 19 years old and, if convicted, face prison terms and heavy fines.

The two Kazakhs have been held for more than a week on allegations that they had violated their student visas. Law enforcement officials said they came to the United States to study at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, the same school where Tsarnaev was enrolled. Tsarnaev is an ethnic Chechen who moved to the U.S. a decade ago and became a naturalized U.S. citizen last year.

Law enforcement officials emphasized there is no new threat, and that the alleged offenses occurred after the bombings.

Authorities for days have been saying they believed that suspects Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a shootout with police days after the bombings, and his younger brother Dzhokhar acted alone, even as investigators searched for clues they may have had help in carrying out the bombings.

​​Meanwhile, Tamerlan Tsarnaev's widow said she wants his body released to his relatives.

As U.S. authorities continue to question the widow, Katherine Russell, her lawyer says she wants her husband's remains released to the Tsarnaev family. Tsarnaev's father Anzor said last week he wants to bury his son, and relatives in the U.S. said they plan to claim the body.

Investigators have spent hours questioning Russell this week about any information she has on how her 26-year-old husband and his 19-year-old brother allegedly built the bombs, and what connections to others they may have had.

U.S. authorities took DNA samples from the home of Russell's parents in the northeastern state of Rhode Island. The investigators are trying to determine who else may have handled the pressure cookers that contained the bombs after finding a woman's DNA on one of them.

Some U.S. lawmakers, including Senator Lindsey Graham, have criticized American intelligence agencies for failing to connect pieces of information collected over the last year that the older Tsarnaev brother was becoming a radical Islamist.

President Barack Obama said Tuesday that a full review of U.S. intelligence gathering on Tsarnaev is underway, but rejected criticism that the intelligence agencies had performed poorly.