Lawyers for Boston suspect deny posing as agents in Russia

Boston Marathon bombing defendant Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's lawyers denied as "preposterous" U.S. claims that they impersonated FBI agents while in Russia for interviews.

The three lawyers, who were investigating their client's background in Russia in a bid to boost his defense, also said they didn't refuse to identify themselves to authorities, according to a filing Monday in Boston federal court.

The Russian government notified the U.S. that the visiting lawyers had been ejected over the incidents, U.S. prosecutors said in a filing Friday. The claim was made as the defense team seeks a delay of Tsarnaev's trial until September 2015. It's currently set to begin Nov. 3.

"Let us be clear: At no time have members of the defense team misrepresented themselves or lied about their work," David Bruck, one of Tsarnaev's lawyers, said Monday. "The defense has no motive to lie or impersonate FBI agents, and every reason not to."

Tsarnaev, 20, a former college student who gained U.S. citizenship after leaving the Dagestan region of Russia as a child, is accused of setting off two bombs near the marathon finish line on April 15, 2013, killing three people and wounding more than 260. He faces a possible death sentence if a jury finds him guilty.

Tsarnaev's lawyers have not denied that he carried out the attack on the Boston Marathon. The lawyers have said in court papers that they will attempt to pin most of the blame on his older brother, Tamerlan, who died in a police shootout in the days after the attack. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was 26 when he died, was radicalized by Islamic extremism and influenced his brother, who looked up to him, the defense has said.

The defense said Monday that its investigation has been hampered by "widespread fear and suspicion among potential witnesses," some of whom have been arrested, indicted, convicted and deported.

The defense also said prosecutors filed "sweeping and misleading" findings about Tsarnaev's "self-radicalization" and haven't provided a full account of the data on Tamerlan Tsarnaev's laptop or a shared family computer in four reports about the devices.

"Tamerlan's computers -- and indeed his very existence -- are omitted from all four of these reports, presumably because the government believes that its case for the death penalty will be stronger if the jury remains in the dark about how the Marathon bombing was conceived, and by whom," Bruck said.

The defense has said its investigation in Russia would seek to uncover details about the brothers that could be used to persuade a jury to spare Tsarnaev's life.

Neither the U.S. nor the defense has identified the lawyers who traveled to Russia.

Bruck, a professor at Washington & Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Va., in 2004 negotiated a life sentence for Jordanian terrorist Zayd Hassan Safarini, who hijacked Pan Am flight 73 on the tarmac of a Pakistani airport in 1986, resulting in the deaths of almost two dozen people.

In Monday's filing, the defense lawyers didn't address a U.S. claim that they misrepresented themselves as tourists when they entered Russia.

Christina Sterling, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz in Boston, declined to comment on the filing.

A Section on 09/16/2014

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