The curious death of a man linked to Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev has become even stranger. Ibragim Todashev first came to light when he was shot to death after reportedly attacked FBI agents looking into Tsarnaev’s potential connection to a triple homicide in Boston two years before the bombing. This week, his father accused the FBI agents of conducting an “execution,” with a gunshot wound to the back of Todashev’s head among five others on his body:
Despite earlier accounts of the incident that suggested Todashev had a weapon, two law enforcement officials told The Washington Post on Wednesday that he was not armed. His father said that he was shot seven times. The FBI has said that he attacked an agent, just moments after confessing to his part in the Waltham slayings.
On Thursday, the medical examiner’s office in Orange County, Fla., referred all calls to the FBI. The bureau has said that an FBI review team is investigating the matter and may not conclude its probe for several months.
The elder Todashev displayed photographs of his son’s body — apparently the same pictures as those shown by participants in a Florida news conference Wednesday evening — that he said show six shots to the body and a “control” shot to the back of the head.
“This is proof of cold-blooded murder,” said Maxim Shevchenko, a journalist and member of the presidential human rights council who organized Thursday’s news conference.
It was an “extrajudicial execution,” said Zaurbek Sadakhanov, a Chechen lawyer who also was present. “Why was he interrogated three times without a lawyer? Why no recording? Why seven shots? And why should I believe their version? Why do American policemen believe they can do whatever they want?”
Those would all be good questions — if the facts of the case supported the accusations. So far, the FBI hasn’t released too many details about the number of shots that were fired and where, but did acknowledge in the last couple of days that Todashev was unarmed. CBS News reports that the FBI has now opened a probe into the shooting to determine what happened:
The FBI has launched an internal probe to investigate the death of Ibragim Todashev, the Chechen immigrant killed last week in Orlando, Fla., during a standoff with an FBI agent and a Massachusetts state police officer. The agent and police officer were interrogating Todashev regarding his ties to Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Thursday, Todashev’s father held a news conference in Moscow and asserted that his son’s death amounted to an “execution-style” killing at the hands of U.S. agents and accused the FBI of shooting his son at least six times, once in the back of his head. Todashev’s wife, Reni Manukyan, also spoke out this week, questioning the FBI’s explanation of the apparent shot in the head and calling for an independent review of the incident.
“It’s the way how they are saying he was protecting himself, that it was self-defense from the FBI agent,” she said. “I don’t think it is self-defense, you would not have shot him on the top of his head. It just cannot be true.”
The probe would have taken place anyway; almost every law enforcement agency in the US has a shooting-review process of some kind to determine whether a use of lethal force was justified. In this case, though, the FBI not only has some serious questions that must be answered, but also a public-relations problem that must be addressed. Todashev’s father has the autopsy photos on display and is making serious accusations, and the longer it takes the FBI to answer them, the worse it will be for them to rebut those charges.
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