Prosecutors are accusing the defense lawyers for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of posing as FBI employees to investigate their client’s background in Russia, the Boston Globe reports.
“Let us be clear: At no time have members of the defense team misrepresented themselves or lied about their work,” Tsarnaev’s lawyers wrote in papers filed Monday in US District Court.
Calling the allegations “false and facially preposterous, ” the lawyers charged that prosecutors had made an “absurd charge.”
Russian authorities recently told the U.S. government that Tsarnaev’s defense team traveled to Russia to investigate the case and falsely claimed they were FBI employees.
“While conducting interviews in Russia, the members of the defense team reportedly refused to produce documents confirming their legal status and identified themselves as employees of the FBI,” prosecutors wrote. “As a result, the Russian government . . . expelled them.”
