Related: May Day: Muddy Murk After Marathon Bombing
"Three accused of obstructing bombing investigation" by Brian MacQuarrie and Todd Wallack | Globe Staff, May 02, 2013
More than two weeks after the Boston Marathon bombings, authorities charged two Kazakh nationals and a Cambridge man with trying to destroy or cover up evidence linking their college friend to the deadly explosions.
Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, 19-year-olds who have been jailed since April 20 on immigration charges, were accused in US District Court Wednesday with obstructing justice by dumping into the garbage a laptop computer and a backpack belonging to bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who attended the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth with them.
That is an important factor. These are the two guys the FBI said nothing about back then, and we hadn't heard or seen a word since. So what is happening here is these guys are being held and threatened with prison so that they will sign the statements. Then they will be deported.
Robel Phillipos, 19, of Cambridge was charged with making false statements to law enforcement officials in a terrorism investigation after he gave varying accounts of what happened, federal investigators said.
The arrests represented the latest dramatic twist in the case, one that introduces to the saga three teenagers, text messages, and Tsarnaev’s alleged light-hearted reference to the bombings. Arrest documents revealed that Tsarnaev had told his friends a month before the Marathon that he knew how to make a bomb.
The charges do not link the suspects with the bombings, but the teenagers do stand accused of hatching a plan, or lying about it, to help Tsarnaev....
It was a spur-of-the-moment plan they developed, investigators said, after spotting their college friend in videos released by the FBI during a desperate hunt for the bombers. They decided to remove the backpack from Tsarnaev’s dorm room and toss it in a New Bedford dumpster, which was then emptied into a landfill.
Last Friday, authorities found the backpack inside a black garbage bag at the landfill. The backpack contained fireworks, a UMass Darmouth homework assignment sheet from one of Tsarnaev’s classes, and other items, investigators said. The court documents made no mention of whether investigators found the laptop computer....
This whole thing is getting more ridiculous by the day. Ever hear of planted "evidence," folks?
Attorneys for the suspects denied their clients had realized that their friend was one of the bombing suspects.
“Dias Kadyrbayev absolutely denies the charges, as we’ve said from the very beginning,” said Robert G. Stahl, his attorney. “He is just as shocked and horrified by the violence in Boston that took place as the rest of the community is.”
Stahl said his client disputes the government’s charge that he recognized his friend in the FBI pictures.
You will sign the statement; otherwise, you are never getting out of here.
Although Kadyrbayev admitted that he disposed of the backpack, Stahl said, he “did not know that those items were involved in a bombing, or of any interest in a bombing.”
If he disposed of the backpack, then how could it be at the scene of the crime?
An attorney for Tazhayakov said his client has cooperated fully with authorities and that he looks forward to “the truth coming out.”
Deport.
“Azamat Tazhayakov feels horrible and was shocked that someone he knew at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth was involved in the Boston Marathon bombing,” said Harlan Protass, the attorney.
Phillipos’s attorney also said his client is innocent.
“My client was not charged with helping the suspect in any way whatsoever before or after and had no knowledge of the incident,” said Derege Demissie, who represents Phillipos. “As to the actual charges . . . I will look forward to litigating that in court.”
In court, Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov appeared in casual clothes before Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler, who scheduled a May 14 preliminary hearing on the charges. The men were ordered held without bail and were taken into custody by the US Marshals Service.
Phillipos was arrested Wednesday afternoon and appeared stunned when he arrived in the courtroom. He was a wearing a blue and white striped T-shirt, jeans, and Nike sneakers....
According to Kadrybayev’s account, authorities said, Phillipos called to tell him to watch the news because one of the bombing suspects looked familiar. After viewing the FBI photos, the complaint said, Kadrybayev texted Tsarnaev and told him he looked like one of the suspects.
Tsarnaev replied “lol” — “laughing out loud.”
The reaction of an innocent man.
Shortly afterward, according to the complaint, Kadrybayev said the three suspects entered Tsarnaev’s room and noticed a backpack containing fireworks that had been emptied of powder. Kadrybayev realized at that point, authorities said, that Tsarnaev must have been involved in the bombing.
To help their friend, the complaint said, Kadrybayev and Tazhayakov decided to remove the backpack and bring it to the New Bedford apartment they shared. There, they put the backpack and fireworks in a large black trash bag, which they tossed in a dumpster about 10 p.m., the complaint said.
Tazhayakov gave a slightly different account to authorities. He said he received a text from Kadrybayev that asked, “Have you seen the news?”
They and Phillipos then went to Tsarnaev’s dorm room. Before they entered, according to the account, Kadryabayev shared this text from Tsarnaev: “I’m about to leave. If you need something in my room, take it.”
Once inside, Kadryabayev found the backpack with an emptied cardboard tube that looked like fireworks casing, authorities said. At that point, Tazhayakov said he realized that Tsarnaev must have been involved in the bombing.
Phillipos offered yet a third version of events, in several conflicting interviews, authorities said. Initially, Phillipos denied that he had gone to Tsarnaev’s dorm on the evening of April 18. But during a fourth interview on Friday, authorities said, he confessed that he lied. Phillipos signed a statement acknowleding that the three suspects had entered Tsarnaev’s room and taken the backpack April 18, authorities said.
There you go.
Once they returned to the New Bedford apartment, according to Phillipos’s account, Kadrybayev and Tazhayakov “started to freak out” because they realized from a CNN report that Tsarnaev was one of the Marathon bombers.
Phillipos said he did not understand most of what his friends were saying because they spoke in Russian. However, when Kadrybrayev asked Phillipos whether he should toss the backpack, investigators said, Phillipos told them to “do what you have to do.”
Phillipos told investigators he took a nap, and that the backpack was gone when he woke up.
The appearance in US District Court for Kadrybayev and Tazhayakov Wednesday was their second legal proceeding of the day. The suspects appeared on videotape, wearing prison scrubs in the South Bay House of Correction in Boston, before a federal immigration judge in the morning on allegations they had violated their student visas.
This is what they are using over these guys to sign the statement.
Tsarnaev had poor grades in each of his four semesters at UMass Dartmouth and owes more than $20,000 in overdue tuition bills, according to people briefed on his record at the school who asked not to be identified. University officials would not confirm or deny the reports of his tuition debts or his grades, citing a federal statute that prohibits release of a student’s education and financial records.
John Hoey, assistant chancellor for public affairs at UMass Dartmouth, said Phillipos and Kadyrbayev left the university after the fall semester. Phillipos withdrew for reasons that were unclear Wednesday, and Kadyrbayev was expelled for poor grades. Tazhayakov was enrolled until this week, but university officials suspended him Wednesday when the criminal charges were filed.
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"Portrait emerges of immigrants’ friendship with bombing suspect" by Maria Sacchetti and Matt Carroll | Globe Staff, May 01, 2013
NEW BEDFORD — Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov were college roommates who clicked with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, another soccer-loving immigrant from the former Soviet Union who, unlike them, blended seamlessly into the United States. Tsarnaev spoke perfect English and knew where to shop and how to have a good time....
The nature of that friendship came under sharp scrutiny Wednesday in Boston, where the men faced charges in two federal courtrooms, first in immigration court, where they had an initial hearing on possible deportation to their native Kazakhstan in Central Asia. Then in the afternoon, federal officials charged the roommates and a third man, a US citizen from Cambridge, with helping cover up their friend’s alleged role in the Boston Marathon bombings....
In immigration court Wednesday morning, lawyers for Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov sought to portray the 19-year-olds as mere acquaintances of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who speaks fluent Russian and is also 19 and in the same sophomore class at UMass Dartmouth.
Lawyers said the Kazakh men were engineering majors whose extremely low grades were endangering their student visas. Kadyrbayev was expelled after the fall semester because of low grades, a university official said.
One of Tazhayakov’s lawyers said in immigration court Wednesday that Tazhayakov was reinstated after switching his major to economics.
“It’s a simple student violation” of their visas, said Linda Cristello, a Boston immigration lawyer, after the initial hearings in immigration court.
In Kazakhstan, Kadyrbayev’s father Murat recently told the online Kazakh news site Tengrinews.kz that his son got excellent grades in high school and “knew Tsarnaev” in college and hung out with him sometimes.
But federal officials offered a different portrait....
Two months before the bombings, Tsarnaev, Tazhayakov, and others gathered on the banks of the Charles River and ignited fireworks. One month before the bombing, court records show, Tsarnaev confided in the men over dinner that he knew how to make a bomb.
It is unclear how Robel Phillipos met the two Kazakh men. Phillipos and Tsarnaev were in the class of 2011 at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.
All four men enrolled in UMass Dartmouth in 2011, though school officials said Phillipos withdrew last year.
Zolan V. Kanno-Youngs, who works part-time at the Globe and knew the boys from high school, described Phillipos as “an extremely popular kid, just like Dzhokhar.”
Although Phillipos and Tsarnaev were close, Kanno-Youngs said, Phillipos led a more disciplined life during his teens, avoiding the parties that Tsarnaev favored. Instead, Phillipos helped his single mother care for younger family members. Phillipos also served on the Cambridge Kids’ Council, a city-sponsored organization that oversees initiatives for children.
“Robel would never knowingly do something wrong,” Kanno-Youngs said.
The revelations Wednesday stunned Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov’s neighbors at Hidden Brook Apartments in New Bedford. Days after the bombings, authorities descended on the men’s Carriage Drive apartment.
Federal immigration officials arrested the two for allegedly violating their student visas on April 20, and authorities searched their apartment.
“It’s a super quiet neighborhood,” said neighbor Felix Jorge, 31, a father of four young children with another on the way. “If a tree branch falls it’s a big deal. For this to happen, it is monumental.”
He said he did not see the men that often.
“They kept to themselves,” he said. “They seemed like nice kids.”
Wednesday’s criminal charges also stirred more uncertainty at UMass Dartmouth, a 9,000-student campus that has attempted to regain its footing with a barbecue and ice cream socials in the days leading up to final exams.
After Tsarnaev was identified as one of the bombing suspects, authorities evacuated the campus temporarily and later discovered a “large pyrotechnic” in his dorm room.
Raja Nageswaran, 25, a business graduate student from India who knew the Kazakh students and Tsarnaev casually from parties, said that Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov socialized with other international students, and that he once saw Tsarnaev with them.
“They were definitely fun-loving,” he said of the men. “They loved to party.”
Not exactly the profile of your self-radicalized Islamist terrorist.
Wednesday, Nageswaran said he was floored by the new allegations. “It’s kind of hard to digest that students who came here to study could do such a thing,” he said.
Officials from the men’s native Kazakhstan, where people in Kadyrbayev’s hometown of Almaty recently held a moment of silence for the bombing victims, appeared in immigration court Wednesday. A lawyer said the nation’s consul in New York had flown in.
Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov, wearing prison scrubs, appeared at the hearing via teleconference on a big-screen TV from Suffolk County jail. They said little as Judge Steven F. Day set hearings for them later this month.
The initial hearing raised questions about why the men were allowed to stay in the United States if their visas were allegedly invalid, particularly Tazhayakov, who left the United States for winter break, then returned on Jan. 20, after his student visa was canceled Jan. 4.
So they knew for two months, huh?
Yeah, let 'em back in, let 'em walk around, we'll pick 'em up later when we need a confession and confirmation of the script.
The discrepancy puzzled the judge, who said, “That doesn’t make any sense.”
None of this staged and scripted government false flag has made sense.
Peter Boogaard, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said Customs and Border Protection officials were not notified that Tazhayakov’s visa was canceled, an issue critics have flagged as a security concern.
I swear I'm going to have a breakdown.
But federal officials said students are typically given 30 days to fix their visa status, which Tazhayakov did. University officials suspended him Wednesday because of the criminal charges filed against him, said John Hoey, assistant chancellor for public affairs.
Boogaard said Homeland Security officials have “recently reformed the student visa system to ensure that [Customs and Border Protection] is provided with real time updates on all relevant student visa information.”
Kadyrbayev had his visa canceled in February, a law enforcement official said. He was not pursued for deportation until after the bombings because he did not match Homeland Security’s top priorities, which are terrorism and threats to national security.
Sigh.
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And just so you don't forget where they are from:
"Bomb in Russia’s Dagestan province kills 2" by ARSEN MOLLAYEV | Associated Press, May 02, 2013
MAKHACHKALA, Russia — A bomb exploded Wednesday in a busy shopping area in the capital of Russia’s restive republic of Dagestan, killing at least two people, police said.
Two teenage boys who tried to open a box left near a store were killed when the bomb inside went off, police said.
The explosion in the city of Makhachkala also wounded an undetermined number of people, said an Interior Ministry spokeswoman.
Islamist insurgents frequently attack police and Russian security forces in Dagestan, with bombs often placed in cars or along roads.
Those are CIA-Duh insurgents.
Wednesday’s explosion, however, may have been intended to frighten the owner of the store and force him to pay protection money, Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said in a statement.
Isn't that what your government just did to you, Americans?
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Also see: None injured in fire at Ashmont home
UPDATES:
"Bombing suspects initially planned Fourth of July attack" by Brian MacQuarrie, Maria Sacchetti and David Filipov | Globe Staff, May 03, 2013
The fresh details from the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev interrogation with the FBI further enhances the notion of an oddly haphazard plot....
Meanwhile, the lawyer for a Kazakh national charged with trying to destroy evidence in the bombing case said Thursday that his client turned over the bombing suspect’s laptop computer to the FBI four days after the deadly explosions.
The computer, which could hold key information about reasons and planning for the bombing, was handed to FBI agents during their first interview with Dias Kadyrbayev, according to his attorney, Robert G. Stahl....
On Thursday afternoon, the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Dzhokhar’s brother, was released from the state medical examiner’s office to an uncle, Ruslan Tsarni of Maryland, and Tamerlan’s two sisters, according to a Russian human-rights worker who is helping the family....
The body was released into the hands of a CIA-connected s***ter?
Television helicopters followed the hearse they believed to be carrying Tsarnaev’s body to the Dyer-Lake Funeral Home and Cremation Services in North Attleborough. Funeral home managers did not respond to calls for comment on Thursday.
A cause of death will be made public once a funeral-service provider files a death certificate, said Terrel Harris, a spokesman for the office.
Kheda Saratova, the human-rights worker, said the Tsarnaev family does not intend to bury Tamerlan until they find an independent coroner to deliver an opinion. The Tsarnaevs have remained dubious of reports that police were taking Tamerlan into custody when Dzhokhar reportedly ran him over.
No one believes them.
“The family is afraid that if Tamerlan is buried before they get all the answers, many secrets will be buried with him, and this will make it harder for Dzhokhar to defend himself in court,” Saratova said.
Yes.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is being held at a federal prison hospital in Ayer. The three men charged with obstructing the investigation are being held at the Essex County Correctional Facility in Middleton....
The government of Kazakhstan said Thursday that officials there are cooperating with US authorities, but that “we would like to emphasize that our citizens did not receive charges of involvement in the organization of Boston Marathon bombings. They were charged with destroying evidence.”
The statement added, “As we have repeatedly stressed, Kazakhstan strongly condemns any form of terrorism.”
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Could they have ben any more obvious?
"Kazakh men drove BMW with ‘Terrorista #1’ license plate" by David Filipov | Globe Staff, May 02, 2013
The two Kazakh students arrested Wednesday in the Boston Marathon bombing investigation are not accused of being part of the plot to set off the bombs, but questions have arisen about the license plate on the BMW they drove, which bore the words “Terrorista #1.”
How could they afford a BMW?
Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev come off as fun-loving teens who did not realize what they were getting into when they allegedly disposed of a backpack and laptop belonging to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is accused of planting the bombs that killed three and injured more than 260. The three knew each other because they went to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth together.
The government of Kazakhstan emphasized today that the young men were not charged with any involvement in the bombings themselves. “We would like to emphasize that our citizens did not receive charges of involvement in the organization of Boston marathon bombings. They were charged with destroying evidence,” the Kazakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement posted on its website.
But the men’s arrests have forced both of their fathers to answer questions about the plate on the black BMW they drove around in.
“Terrorist No. 1 doesn’t mean Osama bin Laden, doesn’t mean ‘terrorist.’ In their slang it’s means ‘happy-go-lucky, a leader of the pack, that sort of thing’ and not that they’re going to blow someone up,” Azamat’s father, Amir Ismagulov, said in a recent interview with a Kazakh television station. “They drove around in that car for four months and no one arrested them.”
Ismagulov is a member of the city council in Atyrau, Kazakhtan, a city on the Caspian Sea that is also known as the oil capital of the oil-rich Central Asian country. He is also a leader of the regional business council.
Hmmmmmm.
Ismagulov was interviewed after the two young Kazakhs were taken into custody on immigration violations but before they were charged Wednesday in the Marathon bombing probe. Kazakh news agencies are reporting that Ismagulov has now left for the United States without commenting on the arrest of his son.
The father said in an interview with a Kazakh television station that Azamat almost never goes to a mosque and only in Kazakhstan.
He said that Azamat had called him when he and Dias were detained just after the bombing.
“They only got involved with Dzhokhar because he went to school with him,” Ismagulov said.
Azamat “told me, ‘We had no idea, papa, that he was the kind of guy who would hurt anyone.”
“He said, ‘We’re in shock.’”
Both fathers have said that Spanish friends bought the two young men the license plate after they bought a black BMW.
In an interview with the Kazakh site Tengri News on April 23, Murat Kadyrbayev, Dias’s father, said, “This joke led to trouble. But it was just a gag of their Spanish friends, just a gift.”
Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev are facing charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice. They were arrested along with Robel Phillipos, 19, of Cambridge, who faces a charge of making false statements to law enforcement officials in a terrorism investigation. Phillipos was also friends with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
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Also see: Biggest names in Boston music to join The One Fund benefit
