Friend of Boston Marathon bomber jailed

A COLLEGE friend of marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison after apologising to Boston residents for impeding the investigation while police hunted the suspects.
AZAMAT Tazhayakov, 21, was convicted of conspiracy and obstruction of justice for agreeing with another friend to remove Tsarnaev's backpack from his dorm room at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.
The backpack contained fireworks emptied of their explosive powder. The bombings on April 15, 2013, killed three people and injured more than 260. Tsarnaev is awaiting formal sentencing after a jury condemned him to die for committing the attack with his now-dead older brother, Tamerlan. Tazhayakov and two other men went to Tsarnaev's dorm room three days after the bombings, hours after the FBI released photos of the Tsarnaev brothers as suspects in the bombings. One of the men, Dias Kadyrbayev, was sentenced this week to six years in prison for removing Tsarnaev's backpack from the room and tossing it in a dumpster. Tazhayakov was found guilty of agreeing with Kadyrbayev to take the backpack and throw it away. "I apologise to the people of Boston for what I did," Tazhayakov said before he was sentenced. He also denounced Tsarnaev's actions. "I want to say that I don't support an extremist. I don't support any Muslim radicalisation," he said. "It just makes me sick what Dzhokhar did on April 15." None of Tsarnaev's friends were accused of knowing about the bombings ahead of time. Judge Douglas Woodlock said their crimes were still severe because they impeded an investigation into a terror attack at a time when investigators were trying to determine the identities of the bombers. Hours later, the Tsarnaev brothers fatally shot Massachusetts Institute of Technology police Officer Sean Collier and had a wild shootout with police. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died following the gunbattle. "There is no question that this was a very serious offense - the failure to act properly when confronted with the devastating event," Woodlock said. Tazhayakov will receive credit for the more than two years he has already spent in jail. His lawyer said he expects him to finish his sentence in nine months to a year. After that, he will be deported to his native Kazakhstan. Prosecutors had asked for a four-year sentence.