An unarmed man was shot to death in his own apartment by the FBI after a grueling 8-hour interrogation. The man was Ibragim Todashev, a Chechen immigrant being investigated because he was an acquaintance of one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing. He was ultimately shot 6 times in the chest and once in the back of the head, which his father describes as an “execution” performed to “silence” his son. Months later, the Feds still have not offered any cogent explanations of the the incident or why their agents altered their story multiple times.
Ibragim Todashev’s death came during the third of three separate interrogations by the FBI in the spring of 2013, according to his father, Abdulbaki Todashev. The first time the FBI visited Ibragim Todashev it was to question him about his relationship with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspects accused in the Boston Marathon bombings. His second encounter with the FBI dealt with a triple murder in Waltham, Massachusetts, that the police believed Tsarnaev was involved with. The third, and final, interview took place in Orlando, Florida, at the home of Todashev and included both FBI and Massachusetts State Police.
The FBI and Department of Justice are conducting an internal investigation into the shooting, but the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the ACLU have called for independent inquiries into the shooting due to the government’s secrecy surrounding the case. Both requests have been rejected by law enforcement, saying that it would be inappropriate.
In October, the Boston Globe reported that the Florida medical examiner’s office said that Todashev’s autopsy report was completed and ready for release on July 8th of 2013. The following Tuesday, the 16th , the medical examiner’s office told reporters that the FBI had ordered the office not to release the autopsy report because of the federal agency’s ongoing internal investigation into Todashev’s death.
“(The FBI) took me and my friend, the suspect that got killed. 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.” — Khusen Taramov
“Maybe my son knew something, some information the police did not want to be made public. Maybe they wanted to silence my son,” Todashev’s father said.
The secrecy surrounding the shooting and the nature of the internal investigation has done little to help answer lingering questions while creating many more. In a newly detailed account of the interrogation, David Boeri of WBUR Boston shines unprecedented light on the events leading up to Ibragim Todashev’s death. His sources say that at some point during the long night of questioning in the cramped, oppressively hot condominium, Todashev cracked and blamed Tsarnaev for the Waltham murders.
“I was there, but I didn’t do the murders,” Todashev allegedly said, according to those who killed him.