A Kazakh acquaintance of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been released from a U.S. prison after serving more than five years for obstruction of justice.
Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Aibek Smadiyarov told reporters in Astana on October 29 that Dias Kadyrbaev arrived in Kazakhstan on October 24.
Kadyrbaev and two other friends of Tsarnaev, Azamat Tazhayakov and Robel Kidane Phillipos, were sentenced in 2015 for removing items from his dorm room at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth after the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013.
Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, planted bombs that killed three people and injured hundreds of others near the finish line of the running race in the U.S. city. Tsarnaev, 25, was sentenced to death in 2015 and is seeking a new trial.
The three acquaintances removed Tsarnaev's laptop computer and a backpack that reportedly was filled with fireworks that could have been used as evidence of bomb-making activities.
Tazhayakov, also of Kazakhstan, was convicted of obstruction of justice and sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison in 2015 following his arrest in 2013. He returned to Kazakhstan after finishing his prison sentence in 2016.
Phillipos was sentenced to three years in prison for lying to FBI investigators about having been in Tsarnaev's dorm room. He was released in February.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev and a police officer were killed during a manhunt that followed the bombing.
