A judge in the U.S. has agreed to release pending trial a friend of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect who is accused of lying to FBI investigators, BBC News reported.

Robel Phillipos, 19, is to be freed on a $100,000 bond provided he wears an electronic monitoring bracelet and is confined to his home.

He and two other friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were charged last week with hindering the investigation.

Phillipos faces up to eight years in prison if convicted.

Meanwhile, a funeral director hired by the Tsarnaev family is searching for a burial place for Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder brother of Dzhokhar, as protestors have picketed the funeral home holding his body.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was reported to be killed in a shootout with police several days after the bombings, which killed three and left more than 260 wounded.

Medical officials in the state of Massachusetts said he died of gunshot wounds and blunt force trauma. Police say Dzhokhar Tsarnaev drove over his brother in a chaotic escape attempt.

Funeral director Peter Stefan has been unable to find a cemetery in Massachusetts willing to accept the remains.

"Everyone deserves a burial," Stefan told Reuters news agency by telephone. "It doesn't matter who it is. I can't pick and choose."

He has said he will ask the city of Cambridge, where the brothers lived over the last decade, to allow Tsarnaev to be buried in a city-owned cemetery.

However, the suspects’ father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said Monday, May 6, that they want to bury their son in Dagestan. “We want to take our son’s body to Russia and bury him here, but US authorities are impeding that,” Anzor said, quoted by RIA Novosti “We are even collecting money to ship the body.”

Tsarnaev's brother, Dzhokhar, 19, remains in a prison hospital recovering from gunshot wounds. He faces the death penalty if convicted of terrorism charges in connect with the attack.

Phillipos is accused of lying to investigators about visiting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's dormitory at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth on 18 April, three days after the bombings.

Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, two other college friends, have been charged with conspiring to obstruct justice by taking a backpack with the remains of fireworks and a laptop from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's dorm room before the FBI searched it.

None of the three men are implicated in the planning of the bombings.