"Russian officials’ warnings to the FBI and CIA about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Islamic radicalization included a prediction that he would change his name as part of a federal citizenship application, a Massachusetts lawmaker said Wednesday — but the alert apparently failed to raise alarms eight months before the Boston Marathon bombing. The disclosure of the Russians’ specific warning about the name change raises additional questions about whether federal agencies missed another signal."
They didn't connect the dots?
FBI’s repeated failures
How did Tsarnaev go off FBI radar?
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was encouraged to be informant, lawyers for brother say
That's how.
FBI recalls Marathon bombing break on ‘60 Minutes’
Give us a break.
"Boston Marathon reviews still incomplete" by Matt Viser | Globe Staff March 14, 2014
WASHINGTON — Nearly a year after the Boston Marathon bombing — and just weeks before the next race — multiple security investigations remain bogged down, leaving unanswered questions about missed signals and communication breakdowns.
Members of Congress and former security officials are growing impatient over what they consider the slow pace of Washington’s official reviews of how the Tsarnaev brothers avoided scrutiny in the runup to last year’s Marathon.
“The delay is unconscionable,” said Tom Ridge, who dealt with the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as secretary of Homeland Security.
“If there was miscommunication or failure to communicate, man up,” added Ridge, now a homeland security consultant. “The tragedy was bad enough. To fail to accept there may have been some procedures that were flawed — you want to correct that to make sure you avoid a similar incident in Boston or elsewhere.”
Multiple investigations were launched last year in Congress and in Washington’s security establishment to review how officials handled information about the potential radicalization of one of the brothers and whether that information was appropriately shared among agencies.
The reviews also are intended to determine what steps may be necessary to help prevent a similar attack.
Yeah, what we have here is another government narrative and cover story meant to bury evidence and look forward.
But there has been little public accounting for what may have gone wrong. The delays, according to members of Congress, aides, and former security officials, are the result of foot-dragging by several agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
Seems familiar for some reason.
The absence of the reports has led to calls for releasing more information into the public arena before the April 15 anniversary of the bombing. Only one group, the House Committee on Homeland Security, has pledged to complete its review by then.
“It’s been too long,” said Representative Bill Keating, a Bourne Democrat and member of the committee. “The urgency is quite obvious: There’s the threat of future attacks.”
The committee’s review was expected to be released before the end of January, but it has remained under review by a number of officials, Keating said.
Senator Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican, asked Department of Homeland Security officials during a budget hearing on Thursday why answers were not coming faster.
“Nearly a year after the Boston Marathon bombings, I’m concerned that there are too many unanswered questions about how the Tsarnaev brothers were able to carry out the attack,” Ayotte said in a statement to the Globe.
Ayotte, along with Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, sent a letter last month asking the Department of Homeland Security why they had not yet provided a long-promised report on lessons learned. John Cohen, the department’s principal deputy counterterrorism coordinator, told committee staff during a briefing in June — nearly nine months ago — that it would be ready “in a few weeks,” the senators wrote.
“We’re almost done,” Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, said during the Senate hearing on Thursday, without explaining the delays. “We need to do a little more scrubbing, and we will get it to you in the short term.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, called on federal agencies to expedite their reviews.
“I appreciate that the pending federal reports must be thorough and comprehensive,” she said. “But nearly a year later ... [agencies] must expedite their reviews and release those findings publicly so that Boston and other communities across the country can take additional steps to improve their security measures.”
Senator Edward J. Markey did not respond to requests for comment on the delays.
Even if the reports find there were no intelligence failures, they could provide insights into how the government should respond to so-called “lone wolves,’’ such as Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of Cambridge, who authorities say cooked up the Boston Marathon bomb plot outside of any formal terror network.
The bombings killed three people and injured more than 260. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police 3½ days after the bombing; Dzhokhar was captured in Watertown and is awaiting trial on 30 charges in federal court.
There had been early signs, in the forms of Russian warnings to US security officials, that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was under the influence of radical Muslim ideas. There also have been questions about whether the FBI should have more directly alerted law enforcement officials in Massachusetts about Tamerlan’s potential radicalization, particularly after he traveled to the Russian province of Dagestan in 2012.
“We have to be very tough, tougher than might seem fair to the folks at the FBI, in analyzing what happened at the Marathon last year,” said former US senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who helped establish the homeland security department after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Almost makes one think Israel did 9/11.
“Here was a case where information that the feds had was not shared with state and local law enforcement. The question is why,” Lieberman said. “We don’t know exactly what state and local police would have done with that. But my guess is further surveillance and questioning of the Tsarnaevs. And that could have prevented this from happening.’’
In addition to the House Homeland Security report and the Department of Homeland Security review, a third major review is being conducted at the request of James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence.
That report is expected in the “early spring” and will contain input from the CIA, Justice Department, and the Department of Homeland Security.
It will be a classified report, and some close observers expect the unclassified summary of the findings to be fairly limited.
“The inspectors general review team has collected data, conducted interviews, and performed analysis in order to examine the information available to the US government before the bombings,” Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III, who is leading the review, said in a statement to the Globe. “The team is also studying the information-sharing protocols and procedures followed between and among intelligence and law enforcement agencies.”
In some corridors of Congress, there is an increasing sense that all of the reports are overdue.
Just waiting for the right time to release for maximum mind-manipulating effect.
“We would have failed at our jobs if there isn’t a public reckoning of what happened before the anniversary,” said one top Senate aide, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “Hope like hell everyone gets their work done.”
One of the difficulties, congressional members and aides say, is that the FBI has been uncooperative. They have declined several offers to testify, in public or in a classified setting.
Congressional committees could have issued subpoenas to force the FBI to testify but have not taken that step. In declining to testify, the FBI previously has cited the ongoing criminal case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
The FBI said it has “fully cooperated’’ with congressional committees but did not comment further.
This dirty laundry stinks.
Keating said the FBI was given three opportunities to testify before the House Committee on Homeland Security.
“There hasn’t been full cooperation,” Keating said. “Two trips to Russia and I get more information than I do going down the street 10 blocks in Washington.”
Interesting, and keep in mind.
A hearing scheduled by the Homeland Security Committee that had been scheduled to be held in Boston will now be held in Washington after Mayor Martin Walsh said such a high-profile event before the anniversary could be a distraction, officials said.
In addition to the federal reviews, officials in Massachusetts have been planning their own accounting of the Marathon bombing. The report, which has involved hundreds of interviews, is meant to address both the security preparations for the Marathon as well as the response to the bombing.
It generally does not touch on the intelligence sharing, which the federal reports are reviewing, or the investigation.
The state report, which is being conducted by TriData, a division of Virginia-based System Planning Corp that has done reviews of other mass tragedies such as the shootings at Virginia Tech, was expected by March 1 but also has been delayed as the scope of the report has ballooned.
“We are disappointed that the report is not final and released,” said Kurt Schwartz, the Massachusetts undersecretary for Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
State agencies are reviewing draft reports, Schwartz said, and changes have been incorporated into planning for next month’s Marathon.
“I’m not going to talk about in detail of what we’re doing differently, but I can say the operational plan to do pre-event intelligence analysis is just far more comprehensive going into the 2014 Marathon than it was going in the 2013 Marathon,” Schwartz said. “A lot of work has gone into ensuring that databases are scrubbed for new information and old information — that dots are being connected across databases, local, federal, and international.”
It showed.
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"Marathon bombing report critical of intelligence agencies" by Matt Viser | Globe Staff March 26, 2014
WASHINGTON — A sharply critical congressional report on Wednesday said federal officials suffered multiple communication failures in the year before the Boston Marathon bombing and called on authorities to significantly tighten up scrutiny of “hot lists’’ of potential terrorism suspects when they embark on foreign travel.
The 37-page report, produced by the staff of the House Committee on Homeland Security, takes the FBI, Customs and Border Protection, and other officials to task for missing opportunities to scrutinize Tamerlan Tsarnaev after he was first investigated by the FBI in 2011.
Although the report stops short of blaming any particular agency for failing to focus more attention on Tsarnaev, it paints a damning portrait of a lack of coordination between them. And it casts doubt on assertions by the FBI and other agencies that greater attention on Tsarnaev would not have prevented the bombings....
In alarming detail, the congressional investigators detailed how....
--more--"
I don't like fiction, sorry.
Ready for more distraction?
"House panel’s report on Marathon marred by partisan fighting" by Noah Bierman | Globe Staff March 27, 2014
WASHINGTON — A bipartisan spirit of cooperation in Congress following last year’s Boston Marathon bombing dissolved into partisan rancor Wednesday, with all but one Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security refusing to endorse the committee’s report documenting intelligence failures.
Top committee Democrats complained that Republicans who run the committee excluded them from deliberations over which classified information to include in the report.
Furious Republicans said Democrats’ complaints were baseless and blamed them for inserting partisanship into the official investigation on the Marathon bombing, which killed three people and injured more than 260. They said Democrats were involved in researching, crafting, and editing the report and that classified sections were removed after Democrats’ protests.
“They’re playing a dangerous game if they want to politicize this deal because it’s a very serious report that we spent an incredible amount of time with the Democrats participating fully,” said the committee chairman, Michael McCaul of Texas. “For them to say this makes no sense to me.”
He said the committee removed sections in the report that drew Democrats’ complaints. The committee spokeswoman, Charlotte Sellmyer, added that the report had been cleared by the National Counterterrorism Center — meaning key intelligence agencies had signed off on classified material. She also noted that Democratic committee staff had traveled to Russia to help research the committee’s findings.
Representative William R. Keating, a Bourne Democrat and the only Massachusetts member of the committee, was the sole member of his party to break ranks and sign on to the report.
“The last thing that the family members and people that were injured — and family members of the victims — the last thing they want to see is any kind of internal issues surfacing,” Keating said.
Keating said he had “zero tolerance” for the congressional infighting and maintained that he was intimately involved in preparing the report.
But the dissent from other Democrats could blunt the impact of the report. Instead of issuing a report that carries the weight of the full committee, McCaul said he was releasing the “McCaul-Keating” report. Six other key Republicans also signed the report.
“It’s a Republican-produced document,” said Loretta Sanchez of California, the second-ranking Democrat on the committee.
She and Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the committee, insisted they had not even read it. Thompson said Republicans were supposed to allow the full panel to review and decide whether to use classified data in the report and then allow relevant agencies to review it.
“I said to the chairman, ‘You will have to produce a report produced by the majority because we are not going to operate outside the rules of the committee,’” Thompson said.
He added that the use of classified information could pose a problem for federal prosecutors in their case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
“We don’t want to compromise the prosecution of the suspect in Boston,” Thompson said.
Another Democrat, Representative Yvette D. Clarke of New York, drew on the report’s conclusions that the nation’s security depends on better coordination from public officials and law enforcement.
“The Homeland Security Committee should demonstrate the same commitment to coordination between Democrats and Republicans who share the same purpose of protecting our nation and its people from a terrorist attack,” she said.
But Representative Mike Rogers, an Alabama Republican and senior member of the committee, said he worries the dispute will take attention from the outstanding performance of first responders at the Marathon finish line last year.
“I don’t want that to get no attention because we’re fussing over some pettiness,” Rogers said.
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Related:
House Democrats downplay findings in Marathon bombing report
Democrats play politics with report on Marathon bombings
House panel details failures in run-up to Marathon attack
Politics deep-sixes bombing hearing
Walsh meddles improperly in hearing on bombings
Important details about the attack and manhunt remain unclear, while Walsh’s stance remains confusing regarding “his city.”
"Report details missed chances ahead of Marathon attacks; FBI’s review of Tsarnaev faulted; communication gaps unearthed" by Matt Viser and Bryan Bender | Globe Staff April 11, 2014
WASHINGTON — An Obama administration review of the Boston Marathon bombings released Thursday revealed communication gaps within Boston’s Joint Terrorism Task Force — a group that relied on office conversations and sticky notes to relay intelligence — and portrayed the FBI’s initial review of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 as somewhat cursory.
They think that ridiculousness is going to stick? The Obama administration has that much disrespect for the American people?
It paints yet another damaging portrait of law enforcement agencies’ missed opportunities to scrutinize Tsarnaev as he became radicalized in the two years before he and his younger brother allegedly planted two bombs at the Boston Marathon.
It's always the same narrative after a false flag.
The 32-page report, the result of a yearlong investigation to determine whether official lapses allowed home-grown terrorists to escape detection, documents in the greatest detail yet how the FBI and other intelligence agencies handled warnings from Russian intelligence officials that Tsarnaev — along with his mother — was becoming a radical Islamist who needed to be monitored.
With the underlying narrative being the terrorists came from Russia -- a year before events in the Ukraine flared up! When one steps back and cooly considers things, one can see globe-kicking war-planners writing the script. That is why the Tsarnaev assets and contacts were chosen to be framed.
The report portrays the FBI’s investigation of Tsarnaev in 2011, which resulted in him being cleared as a potential threat, as only a fleeting look at a potential terrorist. The investigating agent did not question Tsarnaev about his Russian travel plans and militant beliefs, or interview his wife or his friends.
The clearest sign that he was in fact a CIA and FBI contact.
The review also exposes a series of communication gaps and errors.
I've heard that before.
When investigators reviewed how Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s six-month trip to a restive region of Russia in 2012 failed to trigger fresh scrutiny by the FBI, they could not find documentation that information about his travels was shared within the task force.
Because he was sent there by them or the CIA, which would have called of the FBI.
The reason? The practice within the task force was to relay information about travel of potential terror suspects by “email, orally, or by passing a sticky note,’’ meaning there was no documentation that established what communication about Tsarnaev took place.
This 12 years after 9/11 and after construction of the great surveillance grid that has been gobbling things up for years? Seriously?
FBI officials interviewed as part of the review disagreed over the significance of missing Tsarnaev’s trip to Russia. One of the top officials at the Boston office told investigators that knowing Tsarnaev had purchased plane tickets to Russia “would have changed everything.” But the case agent in charge of Tsarnaev’s file said it would not have mattered to the outcome.
Indeed, one of the major findings in the assessment is that Tsarnaev’s overseas travel should have rung more alarm bells....
Meaning the rest is nothing more than a follow-up framing of a dead kid who was told by his government case handlers to at the Marathon that day.
--more--"
How the Marathon bombing manhunt really happened
Harvard report praises response to Marathon bombings
And they made a series of recommendations.
Mistakes in Watertown
Carjacking victim describes his life one year after Tsarnaev encounter
For Watertown residents, normal will never be quite the same
One year later, officer’s recovery continues
Fallen MIT officer Sean Collier remembered in Cambridge
A year later, MIT keeps Sean Collier’s memory alive
"Dennis O. Simmonds died late Thursday night after a medical emergency in the gym of the Boston police academy in Hyde Park, according to Boston police Sergeant Michael McCarthy. He was on duty at the time, and had just taken his lunch break during in-service training. [He was in] the Watertown gun battle with the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, in which he was wounded in an explosion."
Hmm. Another dead guy who can't contradict the government?
DJ Simmonds made his presence felt
Time to lockdown the links.
Tsarnaev allegedly made statement ‘to his detriment’ in visit with sister
Government won't tell us what he said.
Tsarnaev intended humor in remark to sister, defense says
Tsarnaev Lawyers Say They Plan to Tell Story of Family Relations
Bumps in the road smoothed out.
Tsarnaev may get unmonitored visits with family
Tsarnaev charged appropriately, prosecutors say
Prosecutors don’t want Tsarnaev to see victim photos
Don’t cut corners on rights
Tsarnaev lawyers granted more time for evidence challenges
He who should be named
Let's drop some:
Friend of Tsarnaev is confident in justice system
Then Tazhayakov is either an asset or a fool.
At least he is not a pothead:
"Tsarnaev friend asks judge to dismiss charges" by Milton J. Valencia | Globe staff April 11, 2014
One of the college friends of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev asked a federal judge Friday to dismiss charges that he lied to investigators about visiting Tsarnaev’s dorm room several days after the attack, saying he repeatedly told authorities he could not recall the visit because he was high on marijuana.
Robel Phillipos attended the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth with Tsarnaev, and he ultimately admitted that he accompanied two friends to Tsarnaev’s dorm room after authorities released a picture of the suspected bomber to news organizations. The other two friends were later accused of removing evidence from the dorm room, including a backpack filled with fireworks and a computer.
Lawyers for Phillipos said in a court filing Friday that their client spent the entire day of the visit smoking marijuana and that federal agents would not accept his repeated statement that he did not recall entering the room. Phillipos, who knew Tsarnaev from their days at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, also gave differing accounts of what the other two friends did, but said he could not recall clearly, because he was “stoned.”
The lawyers asserted in a motion to dismiss the case that Phillipos was repeatedly interrogated over seven days and was forced to sign a statement of what occurred, much of which he did not remember. They also noted he did not have a lawyer.
“Phillipos had no intention of misleading the authorities in any way,” the attorneys, Derege B. Demissie and Susan Church, said in a prepared statement.
The court request was one of several filings Friday in US District Court in Boston related to Tsarnaev’s case and the charges against his friends, who were accused of lying to authorities and covering up evidence.
Tsarnaev, now 20, faces charges that carry the possibility of the death penalty related to the April 15, 2013, bombings that killed three people and injured more than 260. He and his older brother and alleged accomplice, Tamerlan, were also accused of fatally shooting an MIT police officer before trying to flee. Tamerlan, 26, was killed during a confrontation with police in Watertown.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is being held without bail at the federal prison at Fort Devens in Ayer.
In one of the court filings Friday, federal prosecutors asked a judge to force Tsarnaev’s defense lawyers to disclose by May 7 whether Tsarnaev suffered from any type of mental illness and whether he will present that claim as part of his defense or to prevent the death penalty.
Defense attorneys have not suggested in court filings so far that Tsarnaev was mentally ill. But they have indicated they will argue he was under the “psychological domination” of his older brother, who had turned toward radical Islam. They have asked prosecutors to turn over any evidence supporting that claim.
In a separate filing Friday, prosecutors disputed claims from Tsarnaev’s lawyers that the FBI recruited Tamerlan as an informant, and they maintained that they have turned over all information in the case that they are required to under court rules. A federal judge has slated a hearing for Wednesday on defense lawyers’ arguments for more records, but prosecutors argue those requests are “hyperbole” by an “imaginative defense team” fishing for information.
Who cares? They are entitled to it by law!
Prosecutors also asked US District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. to force defense lawyers to turn over any evidence they plan to use in the scheduled November trial.
They want to see your case before trial. That's illegal, but....
In the days after Tsarnaev’s arrest, authorities charged Phillipos and two friends, Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, both college students from Kazakhstan.
They allegedly went into Tsarnaev’s dorm room after receiving a text message from him saying they could take what they wanted, after his photo had been released. Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov allegedly threw out a backpack and fireworks tubes, and took his computer. The backpack and fireworks were later recovered from a New Bedford landfill.
Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov, who have been charged with obstruction of justice, have been held without bail, and face deportation. Phillipos, a US citizen and native of Massachusetts, has been charged with lying to authorities about the visit to the dorm room and has been released on $100,000 bond.
I wonder where he is hanging out these days.
On Friday, Kadyrbayev’s lawyer asked a federal judge to dismiss the case, saying the charges are too broad, that his client would not have known of the consequences, and that authorities have failed to specify what acts he committed were illegal.
Kadyrbayev also asked a judge, if the case is not dismissed, to strike any references to terrorism and “to the emotional and difficult facts of the bombing,” saying it could prejudice a jury.
We already have newspapers to do that.
--more--"
UPDATE:
"US urges judge to reject request by Tsarnaev friends; Two associates seek dismissal of bomb-related charges" by Milton J. Valencia | Globe staff April 26, 2014
Federal prosecutors urged a judge Friday to reject a request by the friends of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev to dismiss charges the friends face related to the bombing investigation, saying the requests are “without merit.”
Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, students from Kazakhstan who attended the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth with Tsarnaev, had argued in separate court filings that the charges they face are too vague to withstand legal challenges and should be dismissed.
Kadyrbayev had also asked a judge to dismiss what he called “suplusage,” or excessive allegations against him unrelated to the core indictment, but prosecutors also opposed that request Friday.
“The allegations the defendant seeks to strike are directly relevant to the crimes charges,” prosecutors argued. “The law is clear that allegations in an indictment that the government intends to prove at trial cannot be stricken as surplusage, regardless of prejudice.”
The court filings Friday were part of an ongoing series of filings in recent days by both prosecutors and defense lawyers as they prepare for trial, scheduled for June in US District Court in Boston. Defense lawyers have asked that their trial be relocated outside the Boston district, but prosecutors have not yet responded to that request.
Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov, both 20, were arrested days after the April 15, 2013, bombings after they allegedly went into Tsarnaev’s dorm room — after he texted Kadyrbayev saying “if you want you can go to my room and take what’s there” — and removed some of his belongings, including his computer and a backpack containing fireworks. They allegedly threw the backpack in the trash, though authorities later recovered it from a New Bedford landfill.
They have been charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice and aiding and abetting to obstruct justice and face up to 20 years in prison. They also face deportation.
Robel Phillipos, 20, who knew Tsarnaev from high school and from UMass Dartmouth, was also charged with lying to authorities about being with Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov when they went into Tsarnaev’s room.
He faces up to eight years in prison, though his lawyers have asked a judge to dismiss the case, saying he could not recall the visit to the dorm room because he was high on marijuana.
Tsarnaev, now 20, faces the death penalty if convicted of setting off the bombs at the Marathon finish line, which killed three people and injured more than 260. He and his brother and alleged accomplice, Tamerlan, also allegedly shot and killed an MIT police officer. Tamerlan was killed during a confrontation with police in Watertown.
On Friday, a federal judge agreed to give lawyers for Tsarnaev more time to disclose to prosecutors whether they plan to call any mental health specialists at trial and more time to disclose what evidence they will present....
--more--"
UPDATE:
"US urges judge to reject request by Tsarnaev friends; Two associates seek dismissal of bomb-related charges" by Milton J. Valencia | Globe staff April 26, 2014
Federal prosecutors urged a judge Friday to reject a request by the friends of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev to dismiss charges the friends face related to the bombing investigation, saying the requests are “without merit.”
Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, students from Kazakhstan who attended the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth with Tsarnaev, had argued in separate court filings that the charges they face are too vague to withstand legal challenges and should be dismissed.
Kadyrbayev had also asked a judge to dismiss what he called “suplusage,” or excessive allegations against him unrelated to the core indictment, but prosecutors also opposed that request Friday.
“The allegations the defendant seeks to strike are directly relevant to the crimes charges,” prosecutors argued. “The law is clear that allegations in an indictment that the government intends to prove at trial cannot be stricken as surplusage, regardless of prejudice.”
The court filings Friday were part of an ongoing series of filings in recent days by both prosecutors and defense lawyers as they prepare for trial, scheduled for June in US District Court in Boston. Defense lawyers have asked that their trial be relocated outside the Boston district, but prosecutors have not yet responded to that request.
Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov, both 20, were arrested days after the April 15, 2013, bombings after they allegedly went into Tsarnaev’s dorm room — after he texted Kadyrbayev saying “if you want you can go to my room and take what’s there” — and removed some of his belongings, including his computer and a backpack containing fireworks. They allegedly threw the backpack in the trash, though authorities later recovered it from a New Bedford landfill.
They have been charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice and aiding and abetting to obstruct justice and face up to 20 years in prison. They also face deportation.
Robel Phillipos, 20, who knew Tsarnaev from high school and from UMass Dartmouth, was also charged with lying to authorities about being with Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov when they went into Tsarnaev’s room.
He faces up to eight years in prison, though his lawyers have asked a judge to dismiss the case, saying he could not recall the visit to the dorm room because he was high on marijuana.
Tsarnaev, now 20, faces the death penalty if convicted of setting off the bombs at the Marathon finish line, which killed three people and injured more than 260. He and his brother and alleged accomplice, Tamerlan, also allegedly shot and killed an MIT police officer. Tamerlan was killed during a confrontation with police in Watertown.
On Friday, a federal judge agreed to give lawyers for Tsarnaev more time to disclose to prosecutors whether they plan to call any mental health specialists at trial and more time to disclose what evidence they will present....
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