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The Boston FBI agent that killed Ibragim Todashev – a friend of Boston Marathon suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was justified in fatally shooting him, a Florida prosecutor said.
The prosecutor said Ibragim Todashev was a “fearless fighter” who brandished a long metal pole as he attacked the agent and a Massachusetts state trooper who had been interviewing him in his Orlando apartment.
Shortly afterward, the Department of Justice’s civil rights division also cleared the agent.
Ibragim Todashev sustained seven gunshot wounds in the incident, according to an autopsy.
“My conclusion, based upon the facts presented to me in this investigation, is that the actions of the Special Agent of the FBI were justified in self-defense and defense of another,” State Attorney Jeffrey L. Ashton said in a letter communicating the findings of his investigation to FBI Director James Comey.
Ibragim Todashev, a 27-year-old mixed-martial arts fighter, had allegedly just confessed to a role in the 2011 killings of three Waltham men, a crime in which Tamerlan Tsarnaev has also been eyed as a suspect.
The letter said that two Massachusetts state troopers and the FBI agent interviewed Ibragim Todashev for 4½ hours during which he admitted “some involvement in the triple homicide that was under investigation”.
Ibragim Todashev had allegedly just confessed to a role in the 2011 killings of three Waltham men, a crime in which Tamerlan Tsarnaev has also been eyed as a suspect (photo Wikipedia)
One of the troopers left the room after Ibragim Todashev agreed to prepare a written statement describing his involvement. Ibragim Todashev’s demeanor changed at that point, the letter said.
While neither the trooper nor the agent left in the room was looking, a coffee table “is propelled into the air” striking the FBI agent in the head. Ibragim Todashev ran to the kitchen and could be heard rummaging through drawers, apparently looking for something, the letter said.
The trooper then allegedly saw Ibragim Todashev “moving in his direction carrying a long pole of some sort … with the end of the pole pointed toward him as if intended to be used to impale rather than strike,” the letter said.
The FBI agent fired three to four shots from his .40-caliber Glock 23 pistol at Ibragim Todashev as he advanced. Ibragim Todashev was dropped to his knees but was not incapacitated and “immediately sprung toward the officers in what the [trooper] describes as a low angled lunge”. The FBI agent fired three to four more shots, incapacitating and killing Ibragim Todashev, the letter said.
The law enforcement agents knew of Ibragim Todashev’s history as a skilled martial arts fighter, having reviewed his fights on video. They were also aware of recent violent confrontations he had been in both Florida and in Massachusetts, the letter said.
At the moment of the final fray, Ibragim Todashev had easy access to a door behind him to flee, but instead of fleeing, he appeared to choose to fight, the letter said.
“There is no evidence of close range firing in any of the gunshot wounds,’’ the report said. The medical examiner said six bullets were recovered from Ibragim Todashev’s body.
The report marked the first detailed public findings about the fatal shooting of Ibragim Todashev since the May 22 incident. The FBI’s own internal review was completed months ago, and it was awaiting the final review by the Department of Justice.
For more than 10 months, the bureau refused to release the autopsy results or basic details, such as whether Ibragim Todashev was armed, leading to widespread skepticism about the integrity of the investigation.
Ibragim Todashev’s father, Abdulbaki Todashev, a government official on leave in Todashev’s native Chechnya, a region in southern Russia, has said in the past that he would consider a wrongful death lawsuit against the bureau. He has also sent photos of his son’s bullet-ridden body to President Barack Obama and urged him to investigate the case.
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Abdul-Baki Todashev, father of Ibragim Todashev, who was shot by an FBI agent a week ago while being quizzed over his links to the Boston bombers, revealed the extent of his son’s injuries in photographs of his dead body today.
Abdul-Baki Todashev called for an investigation and possible legal action against the agent involved at a press conference in Moscow where he showed the images of his son’s body lying in a morgue with up to seven gunshot wounds, including one to the back of the head.
His angry calls for justice came as a report claimed the 27-year-old native Chechen was unarmed in the clash with a federal agent in Florida on May 22.
Previous reports claimed the US citizen went for the agent with a knife while being interrogated in his home.
However, a report by the Washington Post yesterday cited law enforcement officials saying he had no weapon.
Ibragim Todashev allegedly did become violent when police quizzed him over links to Tamerlan Tsarnaev and an unsolved 2011 triple homicide but he did not have a knife as previously claimed.
“Today I want justice. I want an investigation, so that these people [the FBI] are sued under US laws,” Abdul-Baki Todashev said.
“These are not FBI agents. These are bandits and they must appear in court.”
Abdul-Baki Todashev said he received the 16 images of his son’s body from a friend in the US.
Abdul-Baki Todashev, father of Ibragim Todashev, revealed the extent of his son’s injuries
Ibragim Todashev is pictured lying in a Florida morgue. His father claims they show brutal injuries from up to seven bullets including one to the back of the head.
“This is not a shot that you fire when you come under attack. This is a shot you fire to execute someone,” he said.
“Couldn’t they just handcuff him? At the very least, they could have wounded him in the foot or shoulder. And here he was – killed execution style.”
He added that his son must have had information they didn’t want him to reveal.
“They silenced him,” he added.
Abdul-Baki Todashev now plans to journey to the US to pick up his son’s body and said he had been to the US embassy in Moscow to apply for a visa to do so.
Authorities were pressuring Ibragim Todashev to make a full confession to the murders of three men found in an apartment in Waltham, Massachusetts on the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001.
It is known Tamerlan Tsarnaev was close friends with one of the victims and the FBI have been looking into whether he was involved.
Law enforcement sources told NBC that Ibragim Todashev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev carried out the 2011 killings when a drug deal that turned violent. The suspects didn’t want the three victims to be able to identify them, so they slit their throats, according to the network.
It is that evidence which apparently led them to Ibragim Todashev and his Orlando apartment not far from Universal Studios on May 22.
He had questioned for some hours before he allegedly flipped and the shooting came as one agent stepped out of the room, leaving Ibragim Todashev alone with one officer, the Post said.
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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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Ibragim Todashev, friend of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, implicated himself and Tamerlan in a 2011 triple slaying just before he was killed by an FBI agent early Wednesday, NBC and CBS News are reporting.
Authorities were pressuring Chechan immigrant Ibragim Todashev, 27, to make a full confession to the murders when he suddenly turned violent, according to CBS. An FBI agent responded by firing his weapon and killing Ibragim Todashev.
The incident happened at Ibragim Todashev’s Orlando apartment, not far from Universal Studios. Initially, authorities claimed that Ibragim Todashev had lunged at the agent with a knife, but they later backtracked, saying it was no longer clear whether he was armed.
Law enforcement sources tell NBC that Ibragim Todashev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev carried out the 2011 killings when a drug deal that turned violent. The suspects didn’t want the three victims to be able to identify them, so they slit their throats, according to the network.
Authorities had gone to Ibragim Todashev’s home late Tuesday with evidence suggesting that Todashev, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and Tsarnaev’s younger brother, Dzhokhar, were involved in the 2011 killings.
No suspects had been arrested in that case, in which three men were found in an apartment in Waltham, Massachusetts on the tenth 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 slaying. 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 marathon bombings.
Friends and family members of the 2011 murder victims reacted to news of the alleged confession on social media.
On a Facebook page dedicated to victim Raphael Teken, someone 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.”
Ibragim Todashev implicated himself and Tamerlan Tsaranaev in a 2011 triple slaying just before he was killed by an FBI
“He was funny, kind, joyful and generous,” the message continued.
“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.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, confirmed to the New York Times on Wednesday that her older son knew Ibragim Todashev.
In a telephone interview from Dagestan, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said Ibragim Todashev moved from Boston to Florida about two years ago. She said she is devastated to learn that he has been killed.
“Now another boy has left this life,” she told the newspaper.
“Why are they killing these children without any trial or investigation?”
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.
In an interview with Orlando television station WESH, Khusen Taramov said that the two met while Ibragim Todashev was living in Boston because they were both involved in mixed martial arts and boxing.
Ibragim Todashev “wasn’t like real close friends [with Tamerlan Tsarnaev], but he just happened to know him”, Khusen Taramov said.
“But he had no idea that they were up to something like that, like bombings and everything, you know what I mean?”
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 Tuesday before Ibragim Todashev was killed.
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.
According to the arrest affidavit, Ibragim Todashev had gotten into an altercation with a man and his son over parking space.
Ibragim Todashev told police that the man “got into his face” so he pushed him and then the man’s son “got involved” and Todashev began fighting him.
“Todashev said he was only fighting to protect his knee because he had surgery in March,” the affidavit states.
A mall security officer arrived on scene to find the son unconscious and lying in a pool of blood on the ground just as Ibragim Todashev was pulling away in a white Mercedes.
The officer chased down the Mercedes, ordered Ibragim Todashev out at gunpoint and arrested him.
The son was later treated at a hospital with a split upper lip, several teeth knocked out and head injuries.
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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.
