Friend of accused Boston bomber used pot early in day: witness

By Scott Malone BOSTON (Reuters) - A friend of the accused Boston Marathon bomber began smoking marijuana early on the day of his visit to the suspect's college dorm room, which prosecutors have charged him with lying about, a witness testified on Tuesday. U.S. prosecutors contend that Robel Phillipos, 21, lied to authorities about a visit that he and two other friends made to accused bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's dorm room three days after the April 2013 attack that killed three people and injured more than 260. His lawyers have argued that Phillipos was too intoxicated by marijuana to have remembered what he did that and thus could not have lied about his actions. A friend from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth testified at U.S. District Court in Boston on Tuesday that he and Phillipos had smoked marijuana together early on April 18, 2013, after Phillipos arrived on campus for a meeting with administrators about his drug use. "We smoked a bong," Quan Li Phan, 21, testified. Phillipos left for his meeting but later returned, after the FBI had released photos of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother, identifying them as suspects in the bombing. By that time, Phillipos looked intoxicated by marijuana, Phan said, noting that his friend had been quiet and had bloodshot eyes. "I knew he smoked before he came to my room," Phan said. Earlier, an FBI agent who specializes in electronic records testified that Phillipos exchanged text messages with friends after the FBI released Tsarnaev's photo, in a plea for the public's help in identifying the suspects. "Tell the police everything u know ... Everything," a friend of Phillipos advised him in a text message early on April 19, 2013, FBI Special Agent James Scripture testified. Phillipos, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and two Kazakh exchange students visited Tsarnaev's room at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth on April 18, 2013, after receiving a text message from him telling them to go there and take whatever they wanted. One of the Kazakhs, Azamat Tazhayakov, was convicted in July of obstruction of justice for taking a backpack containing fireworks during that visit. The other, Dias Kadyrbayev, pleaded guilty to obstruction in August. Phillipos faces up to 16 years in prison if convicted of lying to investigators about the visit. Officials last week testified that he initially denied visiting Tsarnaev's room and later said he had gone to the door but had not entered. The visit to Tsarnaev's dorm occurred during a massive manhunt for Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, that resulted in a day-long lockdown of much of the Boston area. The elder Tsarnaev died later that night following a gun battle with police. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 21, is awaiting trial on charges that carry the death penalty. Following Tsarnaev's arrest, Scripture testified, Phillipos messaged a friend saying, "he was one of my oldest friends." (Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Cynthia Osterman)