A friend of the Boston Marathon bomber was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in federal prison on Friday for obstruction of justice.
Azamat Tazhayakov, a Kazakh exchange student, went to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's dorm room at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth just three days after the bombings to remove a backpack that had fireworks in it. At Tsarnaev's trial, prosecutors used empty firework shells as evidence and said that where prosecutors powder used in the bombs was from fireworks, according to Reuters.
At the time Tazhayakov moved the backpack, there was a statewide manhunt underway for Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan.
"It just makes me sick what Dzohkhar did on April 15," Tazhayakov told the court on Friday while fighting 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."
Tazhayakov removed the backpack out of fear, not to protect Tsarnaev, his lawyer, Nicholas Wooldridge, said.
"He didn't agree to get rid of it to help Dzhokhar," Wooldridge said. "He did it because he feared he was going to get in trouble."
Tazhayakov is one of three of Tsarnaev's friends that has faced legal trouble stemming from the bombings.
Robel Phillipos, of Cambridge, Mass., is set to be sentenced on Friday after he was found guilty of lying to investigators. Dias Kadyrbayev, who shared a dorm room with Tsarnaev, was sentenced on to six years in prison on Tuesday after pleading guilty to obstructing the investigation. He removed a back from their room and disposed of it in a dumpster, while authorities later recovered. He also hid Tsarnaev's laptop from police.
Tsarnaev was sentenced to death by a jury last month.
