US officials yesterday charged a Kyrgyzstan national who bought dinner for the accused Boston Marathon bombers the night of the attack with interfering with the investigation into the deadly bombing.
Khairullozhon Matanov, a 23-year-old taxi driver who lives in Quincy, Massachusetts, faces one criminal count of destroying records and three counts of lying to officials in a terrorism investigation.
Prosecutors said Matanov who had been friends with accused bombers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, spoke with both in the days after the blast but lied to police about the extent of his relationship with the pair.
Matanov, who had hiked a New Hampshire mountain with Tamerlan Tsarnaev to "train like, and praise, the 'mujahideen,'" according to court papers, deleted searches related to the attacks from his computer, tried to dispose of cell phones he had used to contact the brothers, and denied knowing much about the pair in interviews with police.
Matanov was not accused of playing a role in the April 15, 2013, bombing, which killed three people and injured 264.
The Tsarnaev brothers have also been accused of shooting dead a police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology three days later.Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died after a shootout with police, while Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 20, was apprehended early the next evening. He is awaiting trial.
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