Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, with Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (from left). Robel Phillipos (inset) was also charged. (
)
Real funny.
Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev didn’t have a care in the world as an army of feds and cops hunted for him after the marathon attack — texting “LOL” to a pal who warned him that his face was plastered all over the news.
“You better not text me,” Tsarnaev wrote Dias Kadyrbayev on April 18 after Kadyrbayev told him about seeing the photos on TV, according to an FBI affidavit.
Kadyrbayev and a second pal, Azamat Tazhayakov, were charged yesterday with helping Tsarnaev cover up his role in the April 15 attack. A third, Robel Phillipos, was charged with lying to the feds about the alleged conspiracy. All four men are 19.
Tsarnaev bragged a month before the attack that he knew “how to make a bomb,” according to the affidavit, signed by FBI Special Agent Scott P. Ciepik.
Yet the first time the men busted yesterday got an inkling that their friend was a terrorist was three days after the bombings, when Kadyrbayev, driving to the New Bedford, Mass., apartment he shares with Tazhayakov, got a call from a panicked Phillipos, saying a suspect in newly released surveillance footage looked familiar.
Kadyrbayev turned on the news when he got home — and saw his pal Tsarnaev. He texted Tsarnaev and got the response “LOL” — for laughing out loud.
“Come to my room and take whatever you want,” Tsarnaev also wrote.
But even then, Kadyrbayev though the texts were a joke.
The three college friends went to Tsarnaev’s UMass-Dartmouth dorm to see if the news was true, Phillipos claimed, according to the affidavit, but the bomber’s roommate told them that he had left hours earlier.
They hung around and watched a movie — then noticed a backpack that held spent fireworks, Kadyrbayev said.
“[He] knew when he saw the empty fireworks that Tsarnaev was involved in the marathon bombing,” the affidavit says. “[He] decided to remove the backpack from the room in order to help his friend Tsarnaev avoid trouble.”
He also grabbed the terrorist’s laptop, and a jar of Vaseline he believed was used to make the bombs.
The trio took the items back to Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov’s pad and watched the manhunt on TV, debating over what to do with the bag.
“Once at the apartment . . . [we] . . . started to freak out, because it became clear from a CNN report that we were watching that Jahar was one of the Boston Marathon bombers,” Phillipos said, using Dzhokhar’s nickname.
Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev decided to toss the bag, authorities said. It was found in a landfill. The laptop’s whereabouts are unclear.
Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev — who drive around in a BMW with the novelty plate “Terrorista #1” — were already in custody for allegedly violating their student visas.
Tazhayakov was allowed to return to the US from his native Kazakhstan in January, even though he was no longer in school.
Kadyrbayev, also from Kazakhstan, was skipping classes.
The three men made their first appearance yesterday in federal court, where Phillipos, a US citizen, was scolded by Judge Marianne Bowler, who told him, “I suggest you pay attention to me rather than looking down.”
Tazhayakov’s lawyer, Harlan Protass, said after court, “My client feels horrible” and “has cooperated fully with the authorities.”
“He considers it an honor to be able to study in the United States and . . . feels for the people of Boston who have suffered as a result of the marathon bombing.”
Kadyrbayev’s lawyer, Robert Stahl, said his client knew nothing of Tsarnaev’s plans: “He did not have anything to do with it.”
“Mr. Kadyrbayev told the FBI about [where to find the backpack]. He did not know those items were involved in a bombing,” Stahl went on.
“We are the ones . . . cooperating with all law enforcement when they came to him, without the benefit of counsel, to assist them in the investigation of this horrible tragedy.”
Derege Demissie, Phillipos’ lawyer, said, “The only allegation is he made a misrepresentation.”
Yesterday’s charges came more than two weeks after Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, set off two bombs that killed three people and injured more than 260.
It was also revealed yesterday that Tamerlan’s widow, Katherine Russell, spoke to her husband by phone after his image was shown on television, according to CNN.
Next week, the House Homeland Security Committee will hold hearings to determine if federal authorities could have prevented the attack.
Meanwhile, the Boston transit cop critically wounded in a shootout with the Tsarnaevs said yesterday he had “almost no blood and no pulse” when doctors “miraculously” saved his life.
Additional reporting by S.A. Miller in DC and Post Wires