BOSTON, May 2 (UPI) — A laptop computer belonging to Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is in the hands of federal agents, CNN and ABC News reported, citing sources.
A law enforcement official said the computer was not discovered during a search last week of a landfill in southeastern Massachusetts, CNN reported.
Two of Tsarnaev’s friends were charged Wednesday with conspiracy to obstruct justice for removing items from his room at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and dumping them. Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, both 19-year-olds from Kazakhstan, got to know Tsarnaev at UMass.
Robel Phillipos, 19, a classmate of Tsarnaev at Cambridge Rindge and Latin high school, was charged with lying to the FBI.
Robert Stahl, an attorney for Kadyrbayev, told ABC News his client turned over Tsarnaev’s laptop to the FBI “the very first time” they came to see him — four days after the April 15 blast in which three people were killed and more than 260 were injured — but did not think the items had any value as evidence. He denied Kadyrbayev knew Tsarnaev was involved in the bombing at the time.
Kadyrbayev posted photos on a Russian social networking site, VKontakte, The New York Times reported. One shows Kadyrbayev, Tazhayakov, Tsarnaev and two other friends in Times Square during a trip to New York last year.
Citing sources, ABC News said Thursday investigators hope to retrieve information from the laptop including what deceased bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev told his wife, Kathryn Russell, in a telephone conversation in the days after the attack.
The body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Dzhokhar’s older brother, was claimed Thursday and released to a funeral home retained by the family, Terrel Harris, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, told USA Today. The medical examiner Monday determined the cause of death, but it won’t become public until the funeral home files the death certificate at Boston City Hall, the newspaper said.
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