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 Cab driver Khairullozhon Matanov is the fourth person connected to
ethic Chechen brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev to face jail
time for misleading investigators during the massive search for the
men who killed three people and injured 264 with a pair of homemade
pressure-cooker bombs.
Matanov's case dates back to the morning of April 19, 2013, when he
went to a police station in Braintree, Massachusetts, south of
Boston, to say that he recognized the Tsarnaevs in surveillance
photos the FBI had released the night before.
Matanov was not accused of playing any role in the attack. He
pleaded guilty in March to lying to investigators about how well he
knew the Tsarnaevs, including the fact that he bought the brothers
dinner hours after the bombings. Matanov said he was unaware of
their role in the attack during the meal.
 "At the time of these offenses, Mr. Matanov was a scared young man.
He was not, and is not, a terrorist," his lawyers wrote in a court
filing endorsing the 30-month sentence agreed to as part of his plea
deal.
Absent a plea, Matanov, who was arrested in May 2014, could have
faced as much as 20 years in prison.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 21, was convicted in April of carrying out the
bombing and shooting dead a police officer. He is due to be formally
sentenced to death next week. Tamerlan, who had been 26 at the time
of the attack, died after Dzhokhar inadvertently ran him over with a
stolen car following a gunfight with police hours before Matanov's
visit to the police station.
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Three college friends of the younger Tsarnaev, Kazakh exchange
students Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, as well as Robel
Phillipos of Cambridge, Massachusetts, earlier this month were
handed sentences ranging from three to six years in prison for
interfering with the investigation.
The trio removed a backpack containing empty fireworks shells from
Tsarnaev's college dorm room and brought it to a New Bedford,
Massachusetts, apartment three days after the bombing.
"Whereas the New Bedford defendants' crimes concerned evidence that
was potentially critical in the case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Mr.
Matanov's crime largely obstructed inquiry into his ties to the
Tsarnaevs," federal prosecutors wrote in a filing supporting the
30-month sentence.
(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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