By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and ELLEN BARRY
Published: May 30, 2013
WASHINGTON — A man who was killed in Orlando, Fla., last week while
being questioned by an F.B.I. agent about his relationship with Tamerlan
Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, had knocked the
agent to the ground with a table and ran at him with a metal pole before
being shot, according to a senior law enforcement official briefed on
the matter.
Orange County Corrections Department, via Associated Press
Ibragim Todashev in a booking photograph this month.
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Deadly End to F.B.I. Queries on Tsarnaev and a Triple Killing (May 23, 2013)
Times Topic: Boston Marathon Bombings
Brian Blanco/European Pressphoto Agency
Ibragim Todashev’s apartment complex in Orlando, Fla., where the investigation continued.
The official’s account of the shooting, the most detailed to date, came
several hours after the man’s Chechen father claimed at a news
conference in Moscow on Thursday that his son, Ibragim Todashev, was
unarmed when he was killed on May 22. The father, Abdulbaki Todashev,
displayed photographs of his son’s bullet-ridden body and demanded that
the United States government explain how he was killed.
On the day of the shooting, federal law enforcement officials provided
differing accounts of the episode, initially saying Mr. Todashev had a
knife. Later they said Mr. Todashev had “exploded” at the agent and
might have had a pipe or might not have had anything in his hands.
The shooting occurred after an F.B.I. agent from Boston and two
detectives from the Massachusetts State Police had been interviewing Mr.
Todashev for several hours about his possible involvement in a triple
homicide in Waltham, Mass., in 2011, according to the law enforcement
official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the
investigation was continuing.
Mr. Todashev, according to the F.B.I., confessed to his involvement in
the deaths and implicated Mr. Tsarnaev. He then started to write a
statement admitting his involvement while sitting at a table across from
the agent and one of the detectives when the agent briefly looked away,
the official said. At that moment, Mr. Todashev picked up the table and
threw it at the agent, knocking him to the ground.
While trying to stand up, the agent, who suffered a wound to his face
from the table that required stitches, drew his gun and saw Mr. Todashev
running at him with a metal pole, according to the official, adding
that it might have been a broomstick.
The agent fired several shots at Mr. Todashev, striking him and knocking
him backward. But Mr. Todashev again charged at the agent. The agent
fired several more shots at Mr. Todashev, killing him. The detective in
the room did not fire his weapon, the official said.
Under the F.B.I.’s guidelines, agents can fire a gun at someone if they
feel the person is a threat to them or someone else. The episode is
being reviewed by a team of F.B.I. investigators who specialize in
shootings and by the district attorney in Orlando, the official said.
At the news conference in Moscow, the elder Mr. Todashev said his son
had been interrogated for eight hours in his home on the day of the
shooting because he had refused to report to an official building for
what would have been a third round of questioning. He said that judging
from his son’s wounds, he had been shot seven times, including once on
the crown of his head.
“I want justice,” said Mr. Todashev, who works for the city government
in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. “I want this to be investigated, so
that these people will be put on trial in America. These are not F.B.I.
agents, they are bandits. They must be put on trial.”
Mr. Todashev, said the agents had focused exclusively on the Boston
bombing the first time they questioned his son, and they raised the 2011
killings in subsequent conversations. He said his son was planning to
fly to Russia on May 24 for a visit because he had received his American
green card two months earlier and was now free to travel.
“Probably he was tired of these interrogations,” he said. “He said, ‘I
am home; you should come to me.’ That kind of conversation took place.
And they came to his home.”
Mr. Todashev, a father of 12, said his son was with a friend, Khusen
Taramov, when the agents arrived. He said they had separated the two men
and questioned Mr. Taramov outside, before releasing him after four
hours. When Mr. Taramov asked about his friend, Mr. Todashev said, “They
pushed him off, told him, ‘We’re going to be with him a long time.’ ”
Mr. Taramov returned later to find the house surrounded by police
officers and emergency vehicles.
“I have questions for the Americans,” said Zaurbek Sadakhanov, a lawyer
who has worked with the Todashev family as well as the family of Mr.
Tsarnaev and his brother, Dzhokhar, the other suspect in the Bostom
bombings. “Why was he questioned for the third time without a lawyer?
Why wasn’t Ibragim’s questioning recorded on audio or videotape, seeing
as he was being questioned without a lawyer? What was the need to shoot
Ibragim seven times, when five fully equipped police officers with stun
guns were against him?”
Related
-
Deadly End to F.B.I. Queries on Tsarnaev and a Triple Killing (May 23, 2013)
Times Topic: Boston Marathon Bombings
He also complained about the muted response of the Russian Foreign
Ministry. The ministry often responds vocally to the treatment of
Russian citizens by officials of foreign governments, but it has made no
statement about Mr. Todashev’s shooting. Much of the news conference
focused on the actions of United States law enforcement.
“We will never know whether Ibragim Todashev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were
criminals, because the investigation ends with their death,” Mr.
Sadakhanov said. “If that’s what happens in American democracy, then I
am against the export of that democracy to Russia.”
Mr. Todashev said Ibragim had graduated from a university in Chechnya
and then traveled to the United States in 2008, hoping to improve his
English. He said his son befriended the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, but
had moved to Florida two years ago. This relationship was of central
interest to the agents who questioned Ibragim, Mr. Todashev said, adding
that his son told them he did not believe the Tsarnaev brothers were
guilty.
“He did not believe the Tsarnaevs did this,” he said. “He said they had been set up. These were his exact words.”
He said he hoped to receive an American visa so that he could retrieve
his son’s body and take it back to Russia for burial. He said that he
has so far received no account of his son’s death from American
officials, and that he had received the photographs of his son’s corpse
from a friend who had sent them to him electronically. The photographs
were published Thursday on the Russian Web site Kavkazskaya Politika.
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