The Guardian. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's friends charged with cover-up in wake of Boston bombs

Three teenage college friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect, were charged on Wednesday with covering up evidence in an attempt to obstruct the investigation into the attack, which killed three people and injured more than 260.

Two Kazakh students and a third man, a US citizen, all 19, are alleged to have disposed of Tsarnaev's laptop and a backpack containing fireworks in the frenzied hours after the names of the two Boston bombing suspects were made public.

Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, both from Kazakhstan, and Robel Phillipos, a US citizen, appeared before a federal judge in a brief court hearing in Boston on Wednesday afternoon. Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov were charged with conspiring to obstruct justice, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in jail and a fine of $250,000. Phillipos was charged with making false statements to federal investigators, which carries a maximum sentence of eight years and a fine of $250,000.

The three men were all friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who was a student at University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. His older brother Tamerlan, 26, was killed after a shootout with police in the wake of the Boston bombings. Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov shared an apartment in the nearby town of New Bedford, Massachusetts

According to the criminal complaint against Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov, the pair recognised Tsarnaev from pictures released by the authorities four days after the attack. Kadyrbayev is said to have told FBI agents that then he sent text messages to Tsarnaev, who replied "Lol", "You better not text me", and "Come to my room and take whatever you want".

In the two weeks since the bombing, more than 1,000 FBI agents have been dedicated to the task of finding out how the bombings were planned and, crucially, whether there was a wider network of support behind the bombers. Early indications from the inquiry have pointed to the brothers acting largely alone, though federal agents continue to look closely at a six-month trip taken last year by Tamerlan Tsarnaev to the troubled region of Dagestan in Russia, where his parents live.