Three friends of the accused Boston Marathon bomber face tough sentences of between seven and 25 years for lying to the FBI and throwing evidence in the trash after being prosecuted.Robel Phillipos, 21, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Kazakh citizens Dias Kadyrbayev, 20, and Azamat Tazhayakov, 20, were found to have
obstructed the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s hunt for those responsible for the April 2013 attacks that killed three people and wounded 264 others.
The April 15 bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon sowed terror throughout the city and were the deadliest such incident in the United States since the September 11 Al-Qaeda attacks in New York.
The swift convictions and the prospect of heavy penalties for the three friends lay the groundwork for the presumed bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, to stand trial in January.
He is accused of 30 federal charges that could see him sentenced to death if convicted.
Tsarnaev, who is of Chechen descent, made friends with fellow Russian speakers Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov as students at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.
Phillipos, a former Massachusetts student not enrolled at the time of the attacks, graduated high school with Tsarnaev in 2011.
The son of an Ethiopian immigrant, Phillipos was found guilty by a jury on Tuesday on two counts of lying to investigating officers.
He faces up to 16 years in prison when sentenced on January 29.
US attorney Carmen Ortiz welcomed the conviction in connection with what she called “one of the most significant events in this city’s modern history.”
“We look to all of our citizens — our neighbors, our friends, our colleagues, even strangers whom we have never met before — to assist law enforcement in detecting, preventing, and solving crimes,” she said.
– ‘The jury got it exactly right’ –
“Mr. Phillipos made a choice: a choice to lie instead of tell the truth. With its verdict today, the jury got it exactly right.”
When the three friends saw images released by the FBI of the two suspected bombers and recognized Tsarnaev, they went to his dorm room.
Prosecutors said Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov took a backpack, tossed it in the trash outside the apartment and kept a computer to protect Tsarnaev while he was on the run.
Tsarnaev had texted the pair after fleeing, saying “if you want to go to my room and take what’s there,” according to prosecutors.
“Ha Ha :)” Tazhayakov replied.
The backpack, which contained fireworks allegedly used in bomb making, a jar of petroleum jelly and a thumb drive for a computer, was recovered by the FBI a week later after prosecutors said 30 agents spent two days searching a landfill site.
Prosecutors said Phillipos was interviewed five times and only confessed at the end of the fifth interview to watching Kadyrbayev remove evidence from the room.
The defense portrayed Phillipos as high on marijuana during the dorm visit and Tazhayakov as innocent, guilty only of foolhardiness.
But Tazhayakov was convicted in July and Kadyrbayev subsequently pleaded guilty in August. They face up to 25 and seven years when sentenced on November 19 and 18, respectively.
The other presumed Boston bomber, Tsarnaev’s brother Tamerlan, was killed in a shootout with police in the days after the attacks.
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