Kazakhstan students kept in small individual cells in US

One of Kazakhstan students accused in the United States of conspiring to destroy evidences in the Boston bombings case told Tengrinews.kz about the conditions of their detention in the American jail. According to Dias Kadyrbayev, he sometimes finds it emotionally hard to be jailed but his spirit has remained undaunted and he plans to fight for the justice. Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov are kept in individual two-by-three-meter cells in Middletown jail, 1 hour drive from Boston. The cell only has a iron bed fastened to the floor in the middle of the cell. “The day starts as 6:00 a.m., breakfast is at 06:30 a.m., lunch is at 10:00 a.m. and dinner is at 4:00 p.m. In the beginning it was very difficult to get used to this schedule. During the first month with were practically isolated from all the information. We did not understand what we were accused of; we were not allowed ready books or make calls. We were later told that it was necessary for adaptation,” Kadyrbayev said. Сonvicts are not tortured, beaten or humiliated, he continued. But at the same time the personnel may ignore requests or addresses and cut the allowed time of a phone call over some unexpected reason. The Kazakhstan teenagers get the phone for one hour a day, except for weekends and force-majeures. Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev are not allowed to communicate with each other. They are not allowed out of their cells for walks. They eat in their cells. “I see Azamat only in court and sometimes when I am being taken somewhere and I walk past his cell,” Dias said. According to him, the two students have quite high chances for acquitment. “But we have to consider the high political and emotional aspects around the tragedy and this can have an effect on the court ruling,” the student said. They are receiving many letters of support from different countries, Dias said. “We receive letters from Brazil, Spain, France, Malaysia, Canada and America: from people who understand the absurdness of the situation that we are in. One of the letters had 100 signatures on it, I counted them. My friends also send me words of support. I get a lot of letters from Kazakhstan from people I don’t even know in Kazakhstan. These words of support are giving me lots of strength to stand up and keep my spirit and fight for my innocence. This case will change me and, I’m sure, my friend Azamat, too,” Kadyrbayev said. The student also told about what happened on April 15, 2013. On the day of the bombing Kadyrbayev and two of his friends, one of them from Kazakhstan, was driving his girlfriend to her college one hour drive from Boston. “She was the one who told me about the bombing at Boston marathon on the phone when I was driving back home. Worrying about my friends and relatives who were in Boston at the time, I started calling them,” he said. Kadyrbayev also commented on the plate number of his car. Kazakhstan students were driving around Boston with the ‘terrorista #1’ plate number. He said it was a gift from two Latino friends from the university. “Those plates are sold as souvenirs at many gas stations in the city. Of course, it was very stupid not to consider the real meaning of this word, but the students here frequently use it as a synonym for ‘joyful’, ‘cool’ and ’funny’. There is a popular song in Spanish with the same name and the student who gave us this plate used this word as her nickname in one of the social networks,” the student explained. The first hearing on the case of Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov was held in Boston on August 13, 2013. They pleaded not guilty to charges of impeding investigators pursuing the perpetrators of the deadly finish-line attack. Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov's parents were present when they appeared before federal judge Marion Bowler in orange prison jumpsuits and in chains. Their next day in court was set for September 26. Federal prosecutor Stephanie Seligmann said 15 to 20 witnesses would testify during a trial expected to last for two weeks. The two 19-y.o. students from Kazakhstan Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov are charged with conspiring to destroy evidences in the Boston bombings case. According to the investigators, they tried to conceal evidence in the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnayev accused of committing bombings in Boston. They are not charge with involvement in the bombings of their preparations. The students have confessed that they took the backpack and the laptop. The evidences were later found at a waste dump. FBI believes that “they took the backpack from Dzhokhar Tsarnayev’s room after they heard on the news that Dzhokhar was suspected of committing the terrorist attack.”