Gelzinis: Tsarnaev pals are not like Whitey's Sunday, July 6, 2014
By:Peter Gelzinis
Last summer, it was Kevin Weeks testifying against his surrogate father, James "Whitey" Bulger, in a gangster trial that now seems rooted in the dark ages.
Tomorrow, 21st-century terrorism will be dissected in the same waterfront courthouse, when 20-year-old Azamat
Tazhayakov answers to federal obstruction of justice charges for the role he is alleged to have played in thwarting the investigation of the accused Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
But the more things change, the more they remain the same. Just as Whitey was buried last year by so many of his former lugs who’d kept their mouths shut and went to jail for him, Azamat Tazhayakov has two buddies, Dias Kadyrbayev and Robel Phillipos, who are awaiting their separate trials for the same charges.
At the moment, Azamat Tazhayakov has rejected a plea deal from the feds, which would have meant rolling over on one or both of his fellow defendants.
All three were friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at UMass Dartmouth and all three are charged with going to Dzhokhar's dorm room and helping dispose of evidence in those critical hours after the FBI broadcast pictures of the Tsarnaev brothers walking on Boylston Street with backpacks slung over their shoulders.
U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock has ruled that prosecutors could use evidence indicating that a month before Marathon Monday, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told
Tazhayakov that he knew how to make a bomb.
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