On May 1, 2013, three friends of accused Boston bomber Djohar (Dzhokhar) Tsarnaev were arrested.
Two of the men, Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, both Kazakh students at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, are accused of conspiring to commit an offense against the United States by “knowingly destroying, concealing, and covering up objects” belonging to Tsarnaev. These items include a backpack with fireworks, Vaseline, and Djohar’s laptop computer.
The following report provides an introduction to the social media presence of Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov. Kadyrbayev, Tazhayakov, and Tsarnaev all had accounts on a social networking site, Vkontakte.com (VK), where images linked to their profiles feature the three men together. As of late in the evening of May 1, 2013, Kadyrbayev’s VK account had been deleted; however, saved pages from the account show his activity and interactions with Tsarnaev. For example, Kadyrbayev, Tazhayakov, and Tsarnaev are shown together in a picture, uploaded in April 2012, that documented a trip to New York City. Another picture uploaded in the same month showed Kadyrbayev, Tsarnaev, and others standing around a bonfire. The two photographs can be seen below:
Other photographs of the men have been deleted, including the following image in which Dias Kadyrbayev appears sitting at a table along with Tsarnaev. The currently-offline photograph was one of two publically-accessible images uploaded to Tsarnaev’s account on the VK social networking site.
{Saved from http://vk.com/albums160300242}
Dias Kadyrbayev
{Saved from http://vk.com/diasya23}
A 19-year old University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth student whose online presence states that he is from Almaty, Kazakhstan, Dias Kadyrbayev maintained an account until May 1, 2013 on the VK social network--a Russian-language social media platform where Djohar Tsarnaev was also active—and on the Facebook networking site. Kadyrbayev’s VK page was very active, with many updates; six shared videos on topics of interest to Kadyrbayev; shared playlists of American rap music; and over a dozen pictures of his activities, spread into three albums.
After Tsarnaev was linked to the Boston bombings, Kadyrbayev began to remove and change content from his page. For example, early on the morning of April 19, 2013, on the day when the FBI announced Djohar Tsarnaev as a person of interest in the Boston bombings, Kadyrbayev changed his profile picture. The new profile picture, and the date and time of the change can be seen in the following screenshot:
{Saved from http://vk.com/diasya23}
Through his VK account, Kadyrbayev claimed that he is a Muslim who speaks English, Russian, and Kazakh. Despite his enrollment in the University of Massachusetts system, Kadyrbayev described himself as a student of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As well, his activity indicates an interest in automobiles, Miami, and American rap music.
{Saved from http://vk.com/diasya23}
Although his page has been removed from the site, saved pages from the account document interactions with Djohar Tsarnaev. For example, the following image from Djohar Tsarnaev’s VK account records a post made by Dias Kadyrbayev on March 23, 2012 commenting on Tsarnaev’s recently changed profile picture, where he indicated his approval of the picture by posting “nice …)”
{http://vk.com/wall160300242_12}
Among the six photographs featured in an album titled “Dias’s wall photos,” Kadyrbayev’ VK page contained two publically-viewable images that included Djohar Tsarnaev. One of the images, uploaded on April 18, 2012 shows Kadyrbayev, Azamat Tazhayakov, and Tsarnaev in Times Square, New York along with two other men. The image can be seen below:
{Saved from http://vk.com/photo170140600_281925315}
A second picture, uploaded on April 18, 2012, showed Kadyrbayev and a man who appears to be Tsarnaev posing around a bonfire. The image, with Tsarnaev on the left of the frame, can be seen below:
{Saved from http://vk.com/photo170140600_28192533}
As well as a VK account, Kadyrbayev has a profile on the Facebook social networking site. His account, facebook.com/disya23, has 83 publically-viewable friends, including numerous students at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth and, among them, Azamat Tazhayakov. The Facebook profile can be seen below:
{www.facebook.com/disya23}
Azamat Tazhayakov
{www.facebook.com/t.azamat.kz}
The second of the associates of Tsarnaev taken into custody on May 1, 2013, Azamat Tazhayakov, is also a 19-year old University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth student from Kazakhstan.
His profile on the Facebook social networking site, which can be seen below, lists his current location as Boston, Massachusetts and his hometown as Atyrau, Kazakhstan. He lists interests including entertainers Rihanna, Beyoncé, Shakira, and Eminem, as well as prominent soccer players, such as David Beckham, Gerard Piqué, Leo Messi.
Through Facebook, Tazhayakov has 125 friends and has uploaded two publically-viewable photographs among the six images associated with his account. One of the images can be seen below:
{https://www.facebook.com/t.azamat.kz/photos}
Azamat Tazhayakov’s twitter account, twitter.com/t_azamat, featured over a hundred and eighty updates. Among them, Tazhayakov retweeted a ten-minute comedy sketch called “Achmed The Dead Terrorist” that he distributed on April 7, 2012 along with a comment that reads, “and here’s a scream.”
{https://twitter.com/t_azamat}
The account was used sporadically, with the first post on October 23, 2011 and the most recent post coming on April 14, 2013--a day before the Boston Marathon bombings—which promoted his participation with a Nike shoe building website. The last two tweets can be seen below:
{https://twitter.com/t_azamat}
Tazhayakov’s profile on the VK social networking site, located at vk.com/t.azamat, is not publically-accessible. However, elements of his activity can be seen through the site, such as in the following message, left on January 6, 2012. The post, responding to a question about the activity level of the group, translates to “It seems not everyone has died”
{http://vk.com/wall-28205009_25}