New York: A taxi driver friend of the Boston bombers was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in a US federal prison Thursday for obstructing the FBI investigation into the bloody 2013 attacks.
Khairullozhon Matanov, an immigrant from Kyrgyzstan, is the fourth friend of the Tsarnaev brothers to be jailed for impeding investigators in the days after the attacks.
The April 15, 2013 marathon bombings killed three people and wounded 264 others in one of the bloodiest attacks in the United States since the September 11, 2001 al Qaeda attacks.
Matanov lied to FBI agents about his friendship, contact and communication with Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
He was indicted in May 2014 and pleaded guilty 10 months later to one count of falsifying, concealing, and covering up a fact, and to three counts of making false statements.
After news outlets reported the FBI was looking for the brothers, Matanov deleted information from his computer, some of which included calls to violence, and made false statements to investigators, prosecutors said.
None of the Tsarnaevs` four friends, now in jail, took part in the attacks or knew about the bombings ahead of time.
Tamerlan was shot dead by police on April 19, 2013, and Dzhokhar was sentenced to death by a jury in Boston last month.
Just 40 minutes after the bombings, Matanov drove the brothers to a restaurant where they discussed the attacks over a meal.
The next day he tried repeatedly to ring Dzhokhar but could not get through and visited Tamerlan at his home that evening.
Matanov moved to the United States in 2010 working various jobs, and resided in Quincy, north of Boston.
His sentence comes with three years of supervised release.
Matanov "repeatedly and intentionally lied to the FBI" about the Tsarnaevs` activities "in the hours and days immediately following the bombings," said Vincent Lisi, the head of the FBI in Boston.
Lisi said he hoped Thursday`s sentencing would send "a strong warning to others that misleading law enforcement will not be tolerated."
