The father of Ibragim Todashev, the friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev who was shot and killed while being questioned by the FBI in Orlando, says his son was murdered to keep him from talking.
Todashev, who we now know was unarmed, was shot seven times, including once in the back of the head.
Now the government is saying that Ibragim Todashev, the Chechen friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev who was killed in Orlando by an FBI agent, was unarmed at the time of his death. Original reports said that Todashev, who supposedly was about to sign a confession implicating himself and Tamerlan in a triple murder in Waltham, MA on 9/11/11, had a knife.
From “The Killing of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Would-Be Accomplice Wasn’t So Simple,” Alexander Abad-Santos, The Atlantic Wire:
“Ibragim Todashev may or may not have pulled a knife on investigators in his own apartment. He may or may not have been ready to sign a confession implicating himself and Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a 2011 triple homicide. All we know is that lethal force was used when Todashev was shot and killed early Wednesday morning, and the only people alive to tell us the truth are the Massachusetts State Police officers and FBI agents who were in the room and pulled the trigger.
“What spilled out in the immediate aftermath were reports that 1) Todashev was about to complete his written confession, perhaps strengthening the case against Tsarnaev; and 2) Todashev pulled a knife on investigators, prompting them to kill one of the only men in America who have known when Tsarnaev turned for the worse. Both of those claims seem a lot less solid today….
“‘I think something went wrong there. I think they just shot him. He didn’t do anything. I know him. He just wanted everything to be over,’ one of Todashev’s roommates told NBC West Palm Beach, and his estranged wife added, ‘He wasn’t involved. So he was not even nervous [to talk with the FBI].’ Todashev’s wife could be talking about the Boston bombings [not the 2011 Waltham triple murder], but she was right about Todashev being cooperative. Todashev, according to CBS, had been talking with the FBI since two days after the Tsarnaev brothers were identified.
“What’s perhaps more puzzling is that the story doesn’t seem to add up: What new piece of information makes a guy who has been cooperating with FBI agents for the last month or so turn on them? Could the seizure of [his] computer have led to more revelations? Could the threat of jail time have dawned on him? And even more macabre, one of Todashev’s friends told NBC Orlando that he had been questioned with Todashev by agents on Tuesday night — and that Todashev felt like he was going to die. ‘He felt inside he was going to get shot,’ Khusn Taramiv said. ‘I told him, ‘Everything is going to be fine, don’t worry about it.’ He said, ‘I have a really bad feeling.'”
I wonder if Todashev felt he had been promised a degree of leniency that wasn’t reflected in the confession he was about to sign, that he felt the FBI had reneged on a deal he thought he had, and he became violent.
Ibragin Todashev, a Chechen who knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev when he lived in Boston, has been shot and killed in Orlando, FL while being questioned by the FBI and other law enforcement.
The shooting is of course being investigated, but the FBI agent involved says he acted in self-defense when Todashev pulled a knife on him.
Todashev apparently confessed to a role in an unsolved triple murder in Waltham, MA that occurred in 2011, and also implicated Tamerlan in the murders. One of the victims was Tamerlan’s best friend.
Todashev apparently knew Tamerlan from their common participation in martial arts.
Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Michael McCaul (R-Texas) believes that the Tsarnaev brothers’ mother played a very strong role in their radicalization. He said that she would be detained for questioning if she were to return to the U. S.
He also said that given the sophistication of the bombs, he believes that the brothers had training.
It should be noted that while the Al Qaeda online magazine Inspire has instructions for making a bomb, it doesn’t tell you how to make the complex triggering device they used.
The FBI says that they know the identity of “Misha,” the Armenian-born American who converted to Islam and supposedly was a strong influence on Tamerlan Tsarnaev as he became more radicalized.
“Misha” has disappeared from Cambridge, MA.
The CIA put the Tsarnaev brothers’ mother, Zubeidat, on the terror watch list 18 months before the Boston Marathon bombings. She is now considered a “person of interest.”
Janet Napolitano says that the Department of Homeland Security did know that Tamerlan Tsarnaev went to Russia last year, despite the misspelling on his travel documents.
That still leaves the question of why they didn’t do more to check him out and keep an eye on him.
I think in general our government sees the issue of radicalized Chechens as Russia’s problem, not ours. The Chechens have been fighting Russian domination for three hundred years. But we need to recognize that while some of these folks just want to attack Russia, and so their struggle is primarily local and political*, others are more committed to global Islamic jihad, and that is everybody’s problem.
* Of course there are religious factors inextricably interwoven with the fight for Chechen political independence. Under the czars and the post-Soviet regime, they were and are Muslims fighting Christians. Under the Communists, they were Muslims fighting official atheism.
The Daily Mail reports that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is awake and answering questions in writing about accomplices and unexploded bombs. He is still unable to speak, but his condition is now considered stable.
Embattled Farmers 