Posted on 06/05/2015 4:47:04 PM PDT by HomerBohn
BOSTON, June 5 (Reuters) - Two college friends of the Boston Marathon bomber were sentenced to prison on Friday for removing a backpack containing empty fireworks shells from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's dorm room amid a massive manhunt three days after the deadly 2013 attack.
Kazakh exchange student Azamat Tazhayakov was sentenced to 3-1/2 years for obstructing justice by taking, with his roommate, Tsarnaev's pack and dropping it in a dumpster by the off-campus apartment they shared.
Robel Phillipos, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, was sentenced to three years in prison for lying to investigators about the incident, which occurred in the hours after the FBI released images of Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, identifying them as suspects.
A third friend, Dias Kadyrbayev, also of Kazakhstan, was sentenced on Tuesday to six years after pleading guilty to obstructing the investigation into the attack that killed three people and injured 264.
The United States never claimed that the three men had any advanced knowledge of the bombing plan, one of the highest-profile attacks on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001..
Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev made statements of apology to the court for their crimes. Phillipos opted not to speak, citing a planned appeal of his conviction.
"It just makes me sick what Dzhokhar did," Tazhayakov told the court, holding back tears. "I didn't go there to the dorm room because I made connection that Dzhokhar was some jihadist. I never thought about it. At that moment I saw that one of my friends was alleged bomber and I didn't know if it was true."
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Good!
so I hid the evidence....
Great DEFENSE!....shheesh!
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