Three college friends of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have been under arrest, suspected of removing items from his dorm room after the April 15 attack, sources said on Wednesday, as reported by NBC News. Two of them were detained on April 20 on immigration charges and a third has been taken into custody, sources said. The suspects will be charged with lying to federal investigators for denying they took the items from the dorm, federal authorities said.
Three college friends of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are being held by police in Massachusetts in connection to the case, allegedly removing possible evidence from his dorm room. NBC's Pete Williams reports.
The two men, Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, came to America from Kazakhstan the Central Asian nation to study at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was also enrolled, the Boston Globe reported.
The law enforcement official did not release the name of the third person arrested.
The three people arrested were connected to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, the surviving bomb suspect, at the university and allegedly helped him after the bombing, a different source told the Globe.
There was not any indication that the three men who have ties to the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, had any prior knowledge of the bombing.
Harlan J. Protass, a criminal lawyer from New York who is representing Tazhayakov, confirmed today that Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev were taken into custody.
"I can confirm that Azamat and Dias were two of the three individuals that the Boston police tweeted about," Protass said. "They are going to be charged criminally." He said he did not know what the charges were but cautioned against jumping to conclusions.
"Additional details will be provided when they become available," Boston police said in a statement.
Law enforcement officials have told NBC News that Dzhokhar told them during questioning he and his brother wanted to defend Islam after the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
