A Chechen man who was fatally shot by an FBI agent last week during questioning about one of the Boston bombing suspects was reportedly unarmed.
One law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity told the Washington Post on Wednesday that Ibragim Todashev, 27, lunged at an agent and overturned a table prior to being shot. The official said Todashev did not have a gun or a knife, echoing a second law enforcement official with knowledge of the ongoing investigation.
At the time of the May 22 shooting, Todashev was being interviewed about his possible connection to a triple murder in Waltham, Mass., on Sept. 11, 2011. Law enforcement officials said he had acknowledged involvement in the murders and had implicated Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Todashev, a former Boston resident who knew Tsarnaev, was not suspected of involvement in the April 15 Boston bombing.
Todashev’s father, who lives in Chechnya, told the Daily Beast website following the shooting that he didn’t believe the FBI’s account of the incident.
“My son could never commit a crime, I know my son too well,” Abdul-Baki Todashev told the website. “He worked helping disabled people in America and did sports, coached other sportsmen. The FBI made up their accusations.”
FBI officials, in a statement released Wednesday, said the matter is being investigated by an internal review team.
“The FBI takes very seriously any shooting incidents involving our agents and as such we have an effective, time-tested process for addressing them internally,” FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said in a statement Wednesday. “The review process is thorough and objective and conducted as expeditiously as possible under the circumstances.”
An advocacy group is also demanding a civil rights investigation into Todashev’s death. A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Wednesday his group is asking the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights division to open a probe into how Todashev died.
CAIR spokesman Hassan Shibly says he wants to know if excessive force was used or whether Todashev’s rights were violated.
A medical examiner has ruled the death a homicide.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Via: Fox News
