The father of a man slain by FBI officials held a press conference in Moscow on Thursday, displaying photos he says depict the wounds his son suffered after a lengthy interrogation on his possible connection to the Boston Marathon bombers. If the photographs are real, the FBI may find it difficult to talk its way out of this mess.
Abdul-Baki Todashev displayed unverified photos of his son, Ibragim Todashev, who was shot and killed by FBI agents and Massachusetts State Police troopers at his Orlando, Fla., condominium last week. The photos were sent by a friend of Ibragim Todashev after his autopsy. While the results of the autopsy will not be made available for several weeks and the medical examiner has declined to comment, the images suggest Ibragim Todashev was shot seven times — six times in the chest and once in the back of the head.
In initial reports of the shooting, officials were quoted as saying that Ibragim Todashev — a 27-year-old Chechen-born permanent resident — had confessed to a 2011 triple murder and was writing a statement when he attacked an agent.
“Todashev was shot to death by a Boston FBI agent in an Orlando condo while being questioned about his connections to the Boston Marathon bombing suspects and a triple-slaying in Waltham, Mass. in 2011, federal law enforcement authorities said. Federal officials said he lunged at the agent with a knife during questioning, and the agent opened fire,” the Orlando Sentinel reported May 22.
The agent suffered a minor skin break requiring stitches.
Shifting reports
However, the official story started to shift immediately. The Associated Press reported that while three law enforcement officials initially agreed to the official version of events, two admitted later the same day that they no longer clearly understood what happened.
A friend of Ibragim Todashev, Khusen Taramov, said in an interview with a local NBC affiliate, “They were talking to us, both of us, right? And they said they need him for a little more, for a couple more hours, and I left, and they told me they’re going to bring him back. They never brought him back.”
The next day, it was reported that a review team from Washington was dispatched to investigate the shooting of Todashev. The review team has been revealed to be 13 men strong.
Abdul-Baki Todashev told The Daily Beast he had advised his son not to worry about the FBI’s questioning.
“I told him he should not be worried, if one of his acquaintances turns out to be a criminal, it does not mean that he is a criminal,” he said. “For some reason the FBI really wanted to present my son as Tsarnaev’s friend, but that was not true.”
“My son was in full cooperation with the FBI but they just murdered him after an almost 8-hour-long questioning,” Todashev continued. “Before this trouble I thought America was a free democratic country, where unlike in Russia, laws worked. I was deeply mistaken — now I think Russia is a golden place compared to the United States. My attitude for America flipped 180 degrees in one minute.”
On May 25, Taramov told the Boston Globe that Ibragim Todashev had a severe knee injury, making him incapable of lunging toward anyone. In addition, Taramov said that “agents had kept tight control over [Todashev] at prior interviews.”
On May 29, the Washington Post reported, “One law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said Wednesday that Todashev lunged at the agent and overturned a table. But the official said Todashev did not have a gun or a knife. A second official also said Todashev was unarmed.”
“An official said that according to one account of the shooting, the other law enforcement officials had just stepped out of the room, leaving the FBI agent alone with Todashev, when the confrontation occurred,” the report continued. “The shooting followed hours of questioning by the law enforcement officials that had begun the night before.”
This confusion has led to allegations of FBI wrongdoing and calls for investigations. During a May 29 press conference, the Florida Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-FL) called for the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division to investigate the shooting.
“Our call for an independent investigation of this disturbing incident is not just about the victim and his family, but is also about constitutional rights and the rule of law,” said CAIR-Tampa Executive Director Hassan Shibly.
The Waltham Triple Killing and Tsarnaev
While it is not exactly clear what the FBI sought from Ibragim Todashev besides questioning of his relationship with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, ABC News, quoting unnamed sources, reported that Todashev allegedly confessed to the unsolved 2011 triple killing of Brendan Mess, 25, Erik Weissman, 31, and Raphael Teken, 37, in Waltham, Mass.
Sometime prior to Sept. 12, 2011, the three men’s necks were slit ear-to-ear by an ice pick or a knife at Mess’s apartment to the point that all three men were nearly decapitated. The corpses were covered intentionally with several pounds of marijuana and thousands of dollars in cash. The cash left exceeded $5,000. While no motive was ascertained, Middlesex County District Attorney Gerry Leone — based on the evidence found and the fact that there was no forced entry — felt that the assailants were known to the victims.
On April 22, the Boston Globe drew the first public connection between Tsarnaev and the triple killing. Tsarnaev was a close friend of Mess, and both were avid boxers. Tsarnaev even stayed at Mess’s apartment on occasion. However, suspicions arose when Tsarnaev seemed unfazed by Mess’s death, choosing not even to attend the funeral services. Tsarnaev also stopped visiting the martial arts center where he and Mess worked out until shortly before the marathon bombing.
On May 10, Massachusetts Police reported that there was “mounting evidence” that placed Tsarnaev in the apartment at the time of the attack — including cell phone records and tentative DNA matches. Further testing, however, is needed for definitive proof.
While there is no definitive proof that Ibragim Todashev was actually friends with Tsarnaev, and while the only evidence of Todashev’s involvement in the Waltham murders is the alleged confession that Todashev was writing when shot, the fact that the FBI thought this was the case and the fact that this situation ended in this way puts the law enforcement agency in a very precarious spot.
“With the eyes of the world once again on the United States’ response to an act of terrorism and its treatment of foreign nationals, the last thing the U.S. government needs to do is fuel wild conspiracy theories by releasing too little information or investigating too slowly,” stated a Washington Post editorial. “The Obama administration must move heaven and earth to get to the bottom of what happened and make it public — quickly.”