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Abdul-Baki Todashev, father of a Chechen immigrant Ibragim Todashev, who was shot dead by an FBI agent while being questioned about his ties to Boston Marathon bombings suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, said Thursday that he regrets allowing his son to go to the U.S.
Ibragim Todashev, 27, was a mixed martial arts fighter who had trained with Tamerlan Tsarnaev in Boston, and his father said they had bonded because of their shared interests and heritage as Chechens from southern Russia.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a shootout with police days after the April 15 terrorist attack.
Ibragim Todashev was killed Wednesday after an altercation with an FBI agent during a meeting with the agent and two Massachusetts state troopers at his home in central Florida. Law enforcement officers say that during the meeting, he had implicated himself in an unsolved 2011 triple murder.
Abdul-Baki Todashev said he was worried that with his son was dead, the FBI could now pin any crime on him.
“Out of fear of the lawlessness in Chechnya, I sent him to the U.S., because it seemed like the safest country at the time,” the distraught father told the Associated Press.
“Now I’m thinking about how to bring home his body. As it turns out I sent him to his death.”
Abdul-Baki Todashev said his son Ibragim, who has a previous arrest for aggravated battery after he left a man unconscious following a fight over a park spot, is “not capable” of killing anyone.
“There is a clear picture emerging that this is all fabricated,” Abdul-Baki Todashev told the Boston Globe.
“They killed my son and then they made up a reason to explain it.”
Friends and family members of the 2011 murder victims reacted to news of Ibragim Todashev’s alleged confession on social media.
On a Facebook memorial for victim Raphael Teken, the moderator of the page wrote: “Whether we ever know exactly what happened, there is one thing we surely know and that is that Rafi deserved a much better fate.
“He was funny, kind, joyful and generous.
“All of us that knew him knew [his death] couldn’t have been about anything he did, but are now horrified by what it may have been about.”
Facebook user Tony Porter wrote: “I’m disappointed that we will never really get to experience true justice for our friend or know the reasons for what happened despite the fact that both alleged suspects are now deceased.
“I don’t know how you are supposed to feel when your friend’s killer gets killed, but I don’t feel <<relieved>> like I thought I would.”
Moderators of a Facebook memorial for victim Erik Weissman wrote: “Hoping for some closure” and posted a photo of him with the caption: “Forever young, forever beautiful, forever in our hearts.”
Ibragim Todashev was shot dead by an FBI agent while being questioned about his ties to Boston suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev
A friend who said he went to high school with Erik Weissman commented: “That playful grin is the Erik that will live on in my memory… Let’s hope [this] represents at least a small step towards some kind of <<closure>> – if that even exits – for his nearest and dearest.”
Ibragim Todashev’s estranged wife, Reniya Manukyan, denied her husband’s alleged involvement in the 2011 triple murder, but she noted that he did travel back to Boston in the summer of that year.
He “had nothing to hide”, she told ABC News.
“He wasn’t involved. So he was not even nervous [to talk with the FBI].”
Reniya Manukyan and her husband separated in November. She said they lived in Atlanta before moving to Orlando in late 2011.
She also said that agents had questioned her several times and even stopped her at the airport when she returned from a trip to Chechnya several weeks after the Boston bombings.
Abdul-Baki Todashev said his son – the second of 12 children – was at university when he got an opportunity to go to the U.S. to study English about five or six years ago. He said he later agreed to his son’s request to remain in the U.S. “because it seemed like the safest country”.
Chechnya has been ravaged by two wars between separatist fighters and Russian federal troops since 1994, and remains troubled by periodic outbreaks of violence. The family’s red-brick house on the outskirts of Grozny, the Chechen capital, still bears the marks of shrapnel.
Abdul-Baki Todashev said his son gave up martial arts because of an injury and later held a number of jobs, including as a driver at a retirement home, before moving to Florida within the last year. The father said Ibragim had planned to come to Chechnya this week to visit his extended family, but was asked by the FBI to delay his trip.
Abdul-Baki Todashev said he had learned of his son’s death from a phone call from one of his son’s friends, who also had been questioned by the FBI. He said the friend, whom he didn’t name, told him that both of them had been pressured to confess to the murders, but that they were innocent.
The FBI gave no details on why it was interested in Ibragim Todashev except to say that he was being questioned as part of the Boston investigation. However, two officials briefed on the investigation said he had implicated himself as having been involved in a 2011 triple murder in a Boston suburb; investigators now suspect that Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have been involved in the unsolved crime.
Law enforcement officials believe, partly based on Ibragim Todashev’s alleged confession, that Todashev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev carried out the 2011 killings after a drug deal turned violent. The suspects didn’t want the three victims to be able to identify them, so they s**t their throats, sources told NBC.
Authorities had gone to Ibragim Todashev’s home late Tuesday with evidence suggesting that Todashev, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and Tsarnaev’s younger brother, Dzhokhar, were involved in the 2011 killings, according to reports.
No suspects had been arrested in that case, in which three men were found in an apartment in Waltham, Massachusetts on the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks with their throats cut and marijuana covering their bodies.
Massachusetts investigators had reported earlier this month that they were uncovering “mounting evidence” that Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, were involved in the sl**ing. One of the victims, Brendan Mess, was a close friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s.
Authorities said they have no reason to believe that Ibragim Todashev had any involvement in the Boston Marathon bombings.
The FBI has been investigating Ibragim Todashev for the last month, questioning him several times regarding his ties to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed by police in a shootout following the deadly April 15 marathon bombings. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, has been charged in connection with the bombings and is being held at a prison medical center outside Boston.
Khusen Taramov, a friend of Ibragim Todashev’s, confirmed that Todashev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev knew each other. He said they had been in contact via phone or Skype about a week before the bombings.
Ibragim Todashev was arrested in an unrelated incident on May 4 for aggravated battery after he left a man unconscious in the parking lot of a shopping mall.
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Chechen Ibragim Todashev has been shot dead by an FBI agent in Orlando, Florida, early Wednesday during questioning related to the Boston Marathon bombings.
The shooting happened just after midnight Wednesday at 27-year-old Ibragim Todashev’s apartment complex near Universal studios, FBI Special Agent Dave Couvertier confirmed.
“The agent encountered the suspect while conducting official duties,” Dave Couvertier said.
“We do not have any further details at this time. We expect to have more information later this morning.”
An FBI post-shooting incident review team has been dispatched from Washington, D.C. and is expected to arrive in Orlando within 24 hours, he said.
Former FBI assistant director John Miller, who now works for CBS News, said the FBI was trying to question Ibragim Todashev at his apartment over his ties to Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev when “something went wrong”.
Chechen Ibragim Todashev has been shot dead by an FBI agent in Orlando
The suspect reportedly attacked the agent, who then fired his weapon and killed Ibragim Todashev.
The FBI had questioned Ibragim Todashev in the past regarding his ties to 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed by police in a shootout following the April 15 bombings. His younger brother, Dzhokar Tsarnaev, 19, has been charged in connection with the bombings and is being held at a prison medical center outside Boston.
Khusen Taramov, a friend of Ibragim Todashev, confirmed that he knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev and had been in contact with him via phone or Skype about a week before the bombings.
In an interview with Orlando television station WESH, he said that the two met while Ibragim Todashev was living in Boston because they were both involved in mixed martial arts and boxing.
Khusen Taramov says the FBI has been following him and Ibragim Todashev since the bombings. He said that they were both being interviewed by agents late Monday night.
He claims his friend is innocent and that he has been targeted by authorities because he is a Muslim.
“He was just a Muslim, that was his mistake, I guess,” Khusen Taramov, also a Muslim, told WESH.
Shortly before the shooting, Ibragim Todashev “had a bad feeling. He felt there’s going to be a set-up against him,” he said.
Ibragim Todashev gave him phone numbers for his mother and father late Monday just in case he got “locked up”.
“We had a feeling that a worse-case scenario, that something like [a shooting] is going to happen,” Khusn Taramiv told the television station.
In an unrelated incident, Ibragim Todashev was arrested May 5 for aggravated battery following a fight in a parking lot.
This is the topless photograph which FBI agent Frederick Humphries sent to Florida socialite Jill Kelley, who is at the centre of the David Petraeus sex scandal.
Frederick W. Humphries emailed the picture to Jill Kelley from an account he shared with his wife, two years before he started the investigation which would lead to David Petraeus’ resignation and very public disgrace.
The picture shows Fred Humphries with his shirt off, posing with two bullet-riddled dummies which look remarkably similar to the 47-year-old.
It was Fred Humphries who initiated the investigation into harassing emails sent to Kelley that ultimately led to the resignation of David Petraeus.
Amid the heat of that exposure the news of his own apparent indiscretion was treated as another layer of sexual intrigue in this tangled tale.
In fact, Frederick Humphries insists, it is nothing of the sort. The email was a joke that backfired more spectacularly than he could possibly have imagined and, perhaps, was allowed to.
The image in question was not some leering pose, directed at the object of his desire, but a round-robin joke – the sort of which the 47-year-old Special Agent was in the habit of sending – that ended with a picture punchline.
In stark contrast to the covert “dead drop” technique of Paula Broadwell and David Petraeus’s email correspondence, Fred Humphries’s message was sent from an account he shared with his wife, teacher Sara.
This is the topless photograph which FBI agent Frederick Humphries sent to Florida socialite Jill Kelley, who is at the centre of the David Petraeus sex scandal
The snapshot showing Frederick Humphries – bald, muscular and shirtless – posed between two buff, bullet-ridden target dummies and carrying the punchline: “Which one is Fred?” was framed and displayed on his wife’s desk at work. His supervisor even pinned it on the notice board in the Bureau.
In fact as the Seattle Times reports, one of the newspaper’s staff was among those to receive the email, sent in 2010 shortly after the Special Agent had been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to the Bureau’s Tampa office.
The email was sent on 9 September 2010. All of which points to the motivation of the sources that first leaked word of its existence being mischievous at best.
Because if not quite an Icarus figure fallen to earth, Fred Humphries reputation has certainly been allowed to wilt in the heat of the media glare.
Special Agent Fred Humphries has been revealed as the face, and torso, of the “Shirtless FBI Agent” whose images were found in socialite Jill Kelley’s email account.
It was Frederick Humphries who initiated the investigation into harassing emails sent to Jill Kelley that ultimately led to the resignation of General David Petraeus.
Amid the heat of that exposure the news of his own apparent indiscretion was treated as another layer of sexual intrigue in this tangled tale.
In fact, Fred Humphries insists, it is nothing of the sort. The email was a joke that backfired more spectacularly than he could possibly have imagined and, perhaps, was allowed to.
The image in question was not some leering pose, directed at the object of his desire, but a round-robin joke – the sort of which the 47-year-old Special Agent was in the habit of sending – that ended with a picture punchline.
In stark contrast to the covert “dead drop” technique of Paula Broadwell and David Petraeus’s email correspondence, Fred Humphries’s message was sent from an account he shared with his wife, teacher Sara.
The snapshot showing Frederick Humphries – bald, muscular and shirtless – posed between two buff, bullet-ridden target dummies and carrying the punchline “Which one is Fred?” was framed and displayed on his wife’s desk at work. His supervisor even pinned it on the notice board in the Bureau.
In fact as the Seattle Times reports, one of the newspaper’s staff was among those to receive the email, sent in 2010 shortly after the Special Agent had been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to the Bureau’s Tampa office.
Fred Humphries sent topless picture to Jill Kelley from email account he shared with his wife
The email was sent on September 9, 2010. All of which points to the motivation of the sources that first leaked word of its existence being mischievous at best.
Because if not quite an Icarus figure fallen to earth, Fred Humphries reputation has certainly been allowed to wilt in the heat of the media glare.
According to the New York Times, Fred Humphries has a reputation as a “hard-charging” field agent. It is a turn of phrase that implies an approach more likely to earn results than friends.
Fred Humphries reportedly received a dressing down from his superiors when he impatiently tried to push forward the investigation into the emails received by Jill Kelley.
Frederick W. Humphries, the mysterious “Shirtless FBI Agent” who began the investigation that led to the resignation of David Petraeus, has broken his silence to say he did not send Tampa socialite Jill Kelley any pictures of a sexual nature.
While not denying the now notorious, but unseen “shirtless” picture exists, Frederick W. Humphries, 47, said the photograph was sent as a “joke” and described it as him “posing with a couple of dummies”.
Refuting media suggestions that the picture was sent because he had become enamored with Jill Kelley, the decorated FBI agent said that the photo was sent years before she contacted him about threatening emails she received from David Petraeus’ biographer-turned-mistress Paula Broadwell.
According to the general counsel for the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association who have spoken to Frederick Humphries, the FBI counter terrorism agent only passed on the information Jill Kelley provided him with and played no part in the subsequent investigation.
Lawrence Berger told the New York Times that Frederick Humphries, who played a key role in stopping a terrorist attack aimed at blowing up Los Angeles International Airport in 1999 and his wife had been “social friends with Ms. Kelley and her husband prior to the day she referred the matter to him”.
“They always socialized and corresponded.”
Lawrence Berger denied any suggestion that Frederick Humphries sent inappropriate shirtless pictures to Jill Kelley during the course of the investigation which has now engulfed the intelligence community in Washington.
“That picture was sent years before Kelley contacted him about this, and it was sent as part of a larger context of what I would call social relations in which the families would exchange numerous photos of each other,” said Lawrence Berger.
Claiming that the picture was sent as a “joke”, Lawrence Berger said that Frederick Humphries was “posing with a couple of dummies” at the time of the photograph and that it was not sexual in nature.
However, those with knowledge of the investigation that Frederick Humphries sparked said that he was given a dressing down by his superiors for trying to push the complaint forward.
In fact, according to the New York Times, Frederick Humphries believed that the case was purposefully being stalled for political reasons.
So much so, that in October, Frederick Humphries contacted Representative Dave Recihert, a Republican from Washington State, where Humphries had worked before to ask for his help – purposefully going over his bosses heads.
Dave Reichert directed him to House majority leader, Eric Cantor who eventually passed the message onto the FBI director, Robert S. Mueller.
Frederick W. Humphries is the mysterious Shirtless FBI Agent who began the investigation that led to the resignation of David Petraeus
According to Wired Magazine, Eric Cantor and his staff personally met with Frederick Humphries in October but were unable to act on the information he was giving them because they doubted his credibility.
They also had no idea that FBI were investigating David Petraeus in the first place and after conferring they decided to contact FBI Director Robert Mueller on October 31st.
One week later, on November 6th, Election Day, Robert Mueller went to James Clapper the director of national intelligence and David Petraeus’ immediate superior – who urged him to resign his position as head of the CIA.
In fact, the House Judiciary Committee has written to Robert Mueller to ask why it took him a week to come forward with the information that Frederick Humphries had given him.
This information puts severe doubt over Frederick Humphries assertion that he took no active interest in the case that has caused the resignation of the CIA chief David Petraeus and could cause the downfall of General John Allen, who commands U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
“Fred is a passionate kind of guy,” said one former colleague.
“He’s kind of an obsessive type. If he locked his teeth onto something, he’d be a bulldog.”
Frederick Humphries has since been reassigned and his status is being reviewed by the FBI.
Jon Adler, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, defended Frederick Humphries as an experienced professional.
“From my view issues of national security have unfortunately been reduced to a bad episode of <<Real Housewives>>,” he said to the Wall Street Journal.
“The photos should not undermine the fact that the agent responded in a timely way and appropriately, nor do they reflect any amorous relationship,” he said.
It was Frederick Humphries who passed on Jill Kelley’s complaint about disturbing emails she had received to his superiors in the FBI Tampa field office.
The investigation tracked down the emails to Paula Broadwell and subsequently discovered the extramarital affair between 60-year-old David Petraeus and the married mother-of-two.
Frederick Humphries grew up in Steilacoom, Washington, attended high school in Canada and rose to become a captain in military intelligence in the U.S. Army.
Studying criminology at the University of Tampa, Frederick Humphries joined the FBI and in 1999 he was involved in the investigation which foiled Ahmed Rassam the “Millennium Bomber” who planned to attack Los Angeles International Airport.
Two years ago the passionate officer was attacked outside of MAcDill Air Force Base in Tampa by a knife wielding man, who Frederick Humphries fatally shot.
An FBI agent was pulled off the investigation into David Petraeus’s illicit contact with Paula Broadwell when he reportedly became obsessed with Jill Kelley, the other woman involved in the probe, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The FBI found that the agent had sent shirtless photos of himself to Jill Kelley, the Tampa woman who reportedly received a half dozen emails from Paula Broadwell that warned her to stay away from David Petraeus. The emails were sent from anonymous accounts.
That same agent was a friend of Jill Kelley’s and he had started the FBI investigation into the emails – which eventually led to David Petraeus’s downfall – after Kelley came to him for help upon receiving the anonymous threats.
The FBI declined to identify the agent, who is now under an internal investigation by the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
After Jill Kelley, a married mother of three, told the agent about the emails, he referred the matter to a cyber crimes unit.
Shortly thereafter, the agent was barred from the case over concerns that he “might have grown obsessed with the matter”, the Wall Street Journal reports.
An FBI agent was pulled off the investigation into David Petraeus’s illicit contact with Paula Broadwell when he reportedly became obsessed with Jill Kelley
Even after he was prohibited from involvement in the case, the agent decided to contact a member of Congress, Republican David Reichert, about the matter.
He complained that senior FBI officials were going to “sweep the matter under the rug”, the FBI learned.
Meanwhile, investigators had traced the harassing emails back to accounts used by Paula Broadwell, a 40-year-old married mother of two from Charlotte, North Carolina. In one of the emails, Paula Broadwell accused Jill Kelley of touching “him” underneath a table and another email asked if Kelley’s husband was aware of her actions, according to the newspaper.
Jill Kelley, 37, is a volunteer who organizes social events for military families in the Tampa area. She often hosts the events at her million-dollar Bayshore Boulevard home, which is located only a couple miles from MacDill Air Force base, where David Petraeus was leader of the U.S. Central Command.
“The Kelley mansion became the place to be seen for coalition officers,” according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Jill Kelley’s husband, Dr. Scott Kelley, is a highly sought-after surgeon who specializes in a rare type of minimally invasive surgery to cure cancer of the esophagus.
Since the Kelleys have been in Tampa, one or both have been subjects of lawsuits nine times – including an $11,000 judgment against them that originated in Pennsylvania, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
The emails which Paula Broadwell sent to supposed love rival Jill Kelley and which led to her affair with David Petraeus being exposed were “kind of cat-fight stuff”, it was claimed last night.
Paula Broadwell was apparently aggressive towards Jill Kelley, saying: “Who do you think you are?”
She also accused socialite Jill Kelley, a Petraeus family friend, of “parad[ing] around the base”, adding: “You need to take it down a notch.”
The revelation comes as a team of FBI agents has descended on paula Broadwell’s home and started removing boxes of household items.
It is unclear what investigators are doing at the house in Charlotte, North Carolina, and they have refused to comment on their latest probe into the writer.
Further questions about the FBI’s role in the scandal, which saw David Petraeus resign from the CIA last Friday, have been raised by the revelation of the notorious emails’ contents by the Daily Beast.
A source told the website the emails did not contain threats or references to the former general, but were instead vague expressions of hostility, taking aim at Jill Kelley’s role as a “social liaison” at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.
When Jill Kelley first reported the messages to a friend who works for the FBI, she did not regard them as a criminal matter, instead simply saying: “I don’t know who this person is and I don’t want to keep getting them.”
The emails which Paula Broadwell sent to supposed love rival Jill Kelley were kind of cat-fight stuff
And when investigators looked at the messages, many were unimpressed, according to the Beast‘s source – many simply concluded, “There’s no threat there.”
However, Jill Kelley’s friendship with an FBI agent apparently meant the bureau took the emails more seriously than they otherwise might have – and helped them uncover the months-long relationship between Paula Broadwell and David Petraeus.
They launched a wide-ranging investigation, interviewing both the CIA director and his former lover, but eventually concluding that no crime or national security breach had been committed.
David Petraeus offered his resignation on Thursday afternoon, and officially stepped down the next day.
It became clear within hours that Paula Broadwell, who met the general in Iraq when she was researching a dissertation which would eventually become a full-length biography, was the woman with whom he had cheated on Holly, his wife of 37 years.
And on Monday evening it appeared that the FBI had reopened their investigation, as at least six agents visited her home – where she is not currently staying – and removed several boxes.
