The Boston Police Department said today that three new suspects have been taken into custody in connection with the Boston marathon bombing that left three people dead and wounded over 150 more. The BPD made the announcement just after 11 a.m. this morning. The Boston Globe reports that the three suspects have been arrested; more details will be released soon, and we will update as soon as the information comes in.
Update: CBS says they've confirmed that the "three suspects were arrested for harboring/aiding the bombing suspects after the fact. These will be federal charges." The Globe adds that all three are college students; according to their source, all three were connected to suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at UMass Dartmouth and helped him after the fact.
Update:: BPD released a statement noting that there was no threat to public safety, with few other details. But NBC is now reporting that the three suspects are Dzhokhar's college roommates, which hasn't been confirmed by police yet. In an article from South Coast Today, one classmate was quoted as saying Dzhokar didn't seem to be close with a roommate:
"Him and his roommate didn't seem to talk much," said Pine Dale resident Tuyen Nguyen, of Worcester, who lived two doors down from Tsarnaev's third-floor room and often saw him spend time with a group of fellow Russian-speakers. "I'd see him once a week and we'd never really talk."
But Dzhokar also allegedly texted the roommate at some point after the bombing: "Hey, you can have all my stuff. I'm going to leave the country."
Update: The three University of Massachusetts Dartmouth students arrested today have now been identified: Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, both 19, were charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice by plotting to dispose of a laptop computer and a backpack containing fireworks belonging to suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the US attorney’s office said in a statement. Robel Phillipos, 19, was charged with making false statements to law enforcement officials in a terrorism investigation, prosecutors said.
On April 19th, three days after the bombing, the three men allegedly removed Tsarnaev’s backpack, which contained fireworks that had been opened and emptied of gunpowder, from his dormitory room. They told authorities they threw the backpack and fireworks in the trash “because they did not want to get Tsarnaev into trouble.”
You can read the criminal complaints against all three below.
Criminal complaints against Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev
