In the first of the trials emerging from the Boston Marathon bombing, a college classmate of the surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was on Monday convicted of trying to cover up evidence that could have incriminated his friend in the days after the attack 15 months ago.
The defendant, Azamat Tazhayakov, 20, was convicted of conspiracy and obstruction of justice in the first of what will most likely be a series of trials leading up to Tsarnaev’s day in court, which is scheduled for the fall.
With each trial, Boston faces yet another reckoning with the events of April 15 last year, when two homemade bombs killed three people and injured more than 260 others, some severely.
Tsarnaev’s defense team has argued that the prosecution of minor figures before his trial in November is a ploy by the government to maintain a steady drumbeat of reminders about the bombings.
In the case that ended on Monday, prosecutors said that after Tazhayakov and another friend, Dias Kadyrbayev, realized that Tsarnaev was a suspect in the bombing, they removed items including a backpack and a laptop from Tsarnaev’s dorm room, and agreed to throw out the backpack. The men attended the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.
The jury found Tazhayakov guilty in connection with the removal of the backpack, but not the laptop.
Tazhayakov was the first of four friends of the Tsarnaev brothers who faced charges stemming from the marathon investigation. Kadyrbayev is set to be tried on the same charges in September.
Tazhayakov nodded and smiled tersely at his family as he entered the courtroom. His mother broke into sobs as the verdict was read.
The jury deliberated for half of Wednesday, most of Thursday (before one juror became ill) and on Monday morning.
Tazhayakov faces a maximum of 20 years in prison on the obstruction charge and five on the conspiracy charge, though Judge Douglas Woodlock could consider lesser penalties at sentencing on Oct. 16.
A lawyer for Tazhayakov, Matthew Myers, said he would appeal.
The six days of testimony at Boston’s federal court delved into the relaxed social dynamics of the three young men and their friends who played video games and smoked marijuana, and offered glimpses of insight into Tsarnaev’s conduct before and after the bombings.
A month before the marathon, prosecutors said, he discussed martyrdom and told his friends he knew how to make a bomb; in the hours after it, he apparently texted Tazhayakov, denying his involvement.
However, the focus was on Tazhayakov. Prosecutors said that he was contacted by Kadyrbayev shortly after surveillance photographs of the Tsarnaev brothers were released by the FBI on April 18 — three days after the bombing.
The government said that the two met, looked at those photographs on Kadyrbayev’s phone, and that Kadyrbayev showed Tazhayakov a text message from Tsarnaev imploring him to “go to my room and take what’s there.”
“Before the FBI knew that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a suspect in that investigation, what did this defendant do? He went to Tsarnaev’s dorm room,” said John Capin, an assistant US attorney.
Capin said the two men removed the backpack and the laptop they found there, as well as other items like a bag of marijuana and a jar of Vaseline.
Jurors heard law enforcement agents testify that Tazhayakov had told them the two agreed it should be thrown out.
Myers called into question the reliability of the FBI agents’ testimony, when their conversations with Tazhayakov had not been recorded.
Tazhayakov’s lawyers did not call any of their own witnesses. However, on cross-examination, they said that their client sat passively in a chair in Tsarnaev’s room as Kadyrbayev searched it, and that it was Kadyrbayev who actually put the backpack in a dumpster near the apartment the men shared in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
“He’s not moving into action to obstruct — that’s fabricated,” Myers said during his closing argument, in which he warned jurors repeatedly about “guilt by association.”
“If you want to find a conspiracy you probably can, because you’re letting the enormity of what happened in this town affect you,” Myers told the jurors. “The reality is, college kids think differently.”
The same evening the two friends went to Tsarnaev’s dorm room, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, allegedly shot and killed Sean Collier, a campus police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They allegedly carjacked an SUV, then allegedly led police officers on a chase in which another officer was shot and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was eventually killed.
However, a juror, Daniel Antonino, 49, who works in healthcare sales, was not persuaded.
“I think any 20-year-old sometimes gets themselves into, in way over their heads,” Antonino said outside the courthouse. “And that could have come into play. But that’s not the way we weighed this case.”
“Destroying the backpack, putting it in a dumpster, that’s pretty damn damning, in my opinion,” he added.
Tsarnaev is awaiting the November start date of his trial on 30 charges.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS