AKIPRESS.COM - Azamat Tazhayakov partied often with his former University of Massachusetts Dartmouth classmate Robel Phillipos, even once in Manhattan’s Times Square, reports Boston Globe.

By the fall of their sophomore year, the two men saw each other several times a week, often with a mutual friend they knew as Jahar before the world knew him as a Boston Marathon bombing suspect.

But on Tuesday, in a federal courtroom, the 20-year-old native of Kazakhstan was a convicted felon wearing a stiff smile, taking the stand as a government witness against Phillipos, who is charged with lying to federal investigators during the bombing investigation. In July, jurors found Tazhayakov guilty of obstruction of justice for being part of a group of friends who entered Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s dorm room after the bombings and took incriminating items to protect him.

Tazhayakov is scheduled to be sentenced next week and faces the possibility of 25 years behind bars. Speaking before jurors Tuesday during Phillipos’s trial, the inmate at the Essex County jail testified about the deal offered to him by prosecutors.

“As long as I tell the truth, it might help me with my sentence,” said Tazhayakov who was allowed to wear a blue suit for his court appearance.
A photo presented as evidence showed Robel Phillipos (center), with Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev in New York’s Times Square.

Tazhayakov’s entrance into the courtroom on Tuesday was one of the more dramatic moments so far in the trial of Phillipos, a longtime Cambridge resident accused of lying to investigators about his whereabouts and observations the night of April 18, 2013. Prosecutors say Phillipos accompanied Tazhayakov and another friend from Kazakhstan, Dias Kadyrbayev, into Tsarnaev’s dorm room on the night the backpack, containing manipulated fireworks, was removed. However, Phillipos, 20, currently denies remembering being in the room that night.