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Late this afternoon a prisoner van deposited all three teenagers at a lock-up near downtown Boston. The three 19-year olds had been ordered held without bond on federal charges linked to the aftermath of the marathon finish line attack.
Two of the suspects are citizens of Kazakhstan. Robel Phillipos is an American citizen from Ethiopia.
According to U.S. investigators, it was here at University Of Massachusetts - Dartmouth that the three were friends with U-Mass student and Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Tonight, federal authorities say that a month before the marathon attack, two of the new suspects were told by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev that he knew how to make a bomb.
A month later the attack killed three at the finish line and injured more than 250.
Tonight's newly-filed federal charges say all three have admitted that on the evening of April 18 - three days after the attack, "they removed Tsarnaev's backpack, a pack containing fireworks, opened and emptied of powder.
They collectively decided to throw the backpack into the trash because they didn't want Tsarnaev to get into trouble."
Federal agents searched a nearby landfill and found the backpack and the fireworks that were inside.
The charges tonight: obstructing justice and lying to federal agents.
"He did not know that those items were involved in a bombing or of any interest in a bombing or of any evidential value," said Robert Stahl, attorney for Dias Kadyrbayev.
The two students from Kazakhstan were actually arrested on visa violations April 20th but at the time there wasn't enough evidence to charge them with the bombing cover-up.
