Three More Suspects Detained in Boston Bombings

 

(RIA Novosti) – US authorities have taken three additional suspects into custody in connection with the deadly April 15 bombing of the Boston Marathon that two brothers with ties to Russia have been accused of carrying out, the Boston Police Department said on its Twitter feed Wednesday.

Officials with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is handling the investigation into the attack, could not be immediately reached for comment Wednesday.

But CNN cited law enforcement sources as saying that two of the additional suspects are citizens of the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan who attended the same university as surviving alleged bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and were arrested on charges of making false statements to investigators and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

The third suspect is a US citizen and is not Katherine Russell, the widow of the other purported bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in an April 19 shootout with police in the Boston suburb of Watertown following a massive police manhunt for him and Dzhokhar, CNN cited a law enforcement source as saying.

NBC News reported Wednesday that the three additional suspects were roommates of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

US Rep. Peter King, a member of the US House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN in an interview Wednesday that sources told him the suspects may have allegedly disposed of evidence related to the bombing.

NBC News cited sources as saying that the arrested individuals are suspected of removing items from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s dormitory room.

Two Kazakh men who attended the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was also enrolled, appeared before a federal immigration judge in Boston on Wednesday morning on suspicion of violating their student visas, The Boston Globe reported.

It could not immediately be confirmed whether the two men, Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, were among the three suspects arrested in connection with the bombing.

Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov were detained for civil immigration violations after investigators questioned them about their possible links to the Tsarnaevs, The Boston Globe reported.