Azamat Tazhayakov choked back tears at his sentencing Friday as he apologized for aiding Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the aftermath of the 2013 terror attack.
Robel Phillipos, another college friend of Tsarnaev, offered the court a letter of support from former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, a friend of Phillipos’ family, according to CNN affiliate WCVB.
Tazhayakov, 21, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Boston to 3.5 years in prison for conspiring to obstruct justice and obstructing justice with intent to impede the bombing investigation, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
Phillipos, 21, was sentenced later Friday to three years in prison for making false statements to law enforcement in a terrorism investigation.
A third friend of Tsarnaev, 21-year-old Dias Kadyrbayev, was sentenced Tuesday to six years in prison for retrieving and later disposing evidence in the investigation.
Tazhayakov told the court Friday that he was sorry for his actions.
“I want to say that I don’t support extremists. I don’t support any Muslim radicalism. It just makes me sick what Dzhokhar did on April 15,” he said, referring to the day of the attacks.
“I could have made better decisions,” he added, according to WCVB. “I could have called police when I suspected it was Dzhokhar … I apologize to the people of Boston.”
Tazhayakov is to be deported to his native Kazakhstan upon his release from prison, WCVB reported.
Phillipos did not make a statement at sentencing but a letter of support from Dukakis was presented to the court.
The more than two years the two men have spent in jail will be applied to their sentences, CNN affiliate WGBH reported.
Kadyrbayev saw images of the bombers released on the evening of April 18, 2013, and exchanged text messages with Tsarnaev, according to federal prosecutors.
Later that night, Kadyrbayev, Tazhayakov and Philipos went into Tsarnaev’s dorm room at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Kadyrbayev removed Tsarnaev’s laptop and a backpack containing fireworks, a jar of Vaseline and a thumb drive, prosecutors said.
Over the next day and a half, Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov watched and read news reports about the manhunt for suspects, the statement said. The two men believed the bombers were Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan, who was killed in the manhunt.
Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov later agreed to dispose of the backpack. Kadyrbayev put the backpack into a trash bag and discarded the bag into a dumpster, the statement said. Kadyrbayev kept the laptop.
On April 26, 2013, federal agents found the backpack in a landfill, according to prosecutors.
Kadyrbayev agreed to be deported to Kazakhstan after serving his sentence. He was in the U.S. on a revoked student visa at the time of his arrest, the statement said.
Tsarnaev was sentenced to death last month for his role in the Boston Marathon attacks. A jury convicted Tsarnaev on all 30 charges he faced.
His older brother, Tamerlan, 26, was killed after a gunfight with Watertown, Massachusetts, police after the younger brother tried to free him with a stolen SUV but ran him down instead, authorities said.
