Three 19-year-old college friends of one of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers were charged with hindering the investigation in the days after the April 15 attack by tossing out evidence and lying to police.

Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov were charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, and Robel Phillipos was charged with lying to investigators. They are to appear today in Boston federal court. If convicted, they face as long as five years in prison for obstruction and eight years for false statements.

Two of the three men are from Kazakhstan and were friends with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the main suspect in the attack that killed three people and injured more than 200. All four were students at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. Tsarnaev, 19, faces two capital counts, including using a weapon of mass destruction. Raja Nageswaran, 25, a graduate student at UMass Dartmouth, said he knew the two Kazakh students.

“These two had a black BMW,” Nageswaran said today in an interview. “They were noticeable, the way they drove.” Najeswaran said Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov would blast music from the car as they drove around, tires screeching, he said.

Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev allegedly sought to block the investigation by removing Tsarnaev’s laptop and a backpack containing fireworks. Robert Stahl, a lawyer for Kadyrbayev, and Tazhayakov’s attorney, Harlan Protass, said their clients will plead not guilty.

Phillipos’ lawyer couldn’t be immediately identified.

Student Visas

Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev, who live in New Bedford, are in the U.S. on student visas. They were arrested on April 20 on immigration violations, according to the criminal complaint. Phillipos is a U.S. citizen who lives in Cambridge.

Police in New Bedford said April 22 they believe Tsarnaev spent the two nights after the bombing with acquaintances near campus. Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev’s apartment was cordoned off and searched that day.

Kadyrbayev, Tazhayakov and Phillipos began attending the university with Tsarnaev in 2011, according to court papers. Tazhayakov became friends with Tsarnaev in the fall of that year, the U.S. said.

On April 18, after the FBI released photos of the suspected Marathon bombers, Kadyrbayev, Tazhayakov and Phillipos went to Tsarnaev’s dormitory room and were let inside by Tsarnaev’s roommate. They watched a movie and saw a backpack containing fireworks that had been opened and emptied of powder, Kadyrbayev told investigators.

‘Freak Out’

Phillipos said that Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev “started to freak out” when they realized while watching news reports that Tsarnaev was involved in the bombing. He said he didn’t understand much of what they were saying because they were speaking in Russian.

Kadyrbayev told investigators that when he saw the suspects’ photographs on television, he thought one of them looked like Tsarnaev, according to the complaint. When he sent Tsarnaev a text message about it, Tsarnaev responded, “lol.”

Kadyrbayev also found a jar of Vaseline in the room and told Tazhayakov that he believed Tsarnaev had used the Vaseline to make bombs, according to the filing. Kadyrbayev knew when he saw the empty fireworks that Tsarnaev was involved in the bombing and decided to remove the backpack from the room “in order to help his friend Tsarnaev avoid trouble,” according to the filing.

Removed Backpack

Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov removed the backpack, Vaseline and Tsarneav’s laptop from the dorm room and went back to their apartment, Tazhayakov told investigators.

The three then watched news reports showing photos of the bombing suspect and decided to throw the backpack and fireworks into the trash. Kadyrbayev put the backpack and fireworks into a large black trash bag and threw it into a dumpster, according to the filing.

On the night of April 19, Tazhayakov saw a garbage truck arrive at the apartment complex to empty the dumpster, he said. Investigators recovered Tsarnaev’s backpack from a New Bedford landfill on April 26, according to agent’s affidavit filed with the court.

The backpack held Vaseline, fireworks, and his homework assignment sheets from school.

Same School

Robel Phillipos was a 2011 graduate of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, according to the city school system’s superintendent’s office. Tsarnaev also attended the prestigious public high school, and received a higher-education scholarship from the City of Cambridge in 2011.

“Phillipos initially said that he did not remember going to Tsarnaev’s dormitory room on the evening of April 18,” investigators said in the complaint. “He then changed his story and said that he did remember going to Tsarnaev’s room with Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov.”

Tsarnaev, who was injured during a four-day manhunt by police, is in a federal prison hospital outside Boston. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been interviewing people connected to him and his brother, Tamerlan.

According to a U.S. official, agents on April 29 took DNA samples from Katherine Tsarnaev, the widow of Tamerlan, who was killed during the manhunt following the bombing.

The Tsarnaev brothers, ethnic Chechens who came to the U.S. with their parents as refugees from Russia’s Caucasus region, were motivated by radical Islam they learned mostly over the Internet, according to lawmakers briefed by federal law- enforcement officials.

The case is U.S. v. Phillipos, 13-02162, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts (Boston)

To contact the reporters on this story: Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net; David McLaughlin in New York at dmclaughlin9@bloomberg.net; Janelle Lawrence in Boston federal court at jmlawrence@me.com.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Pickering at jpickering@bloomberg.net; Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net;