Breaking: Explosion Reported at Boston Marathon's Finish Line

[Peter Lemkin]

WASHINGTON A man who was killed in Orlando, Fla., last week while being questioned by an F.B.I. agent about his relationship with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, had knocked the agent to the ground with a table and ran at him with a metal pole before being shot, according to a senior law enforcement official [not named] briefed on the matter.

Orange County Corrections Department, via Associated Press

Ibragim Todashev in a booking photograph this month.



Brian Blanco/European Pressphoto Agency

Ibragim Todashev's apartment complex in Orlando, Fla., where the investigation continued.


The official's account of the shooting, the most detailed to date, came several hours after the man's Chechen father claimed at a news conference in Moscow on Thursday that his son, Ibragim Todashev, was unarmed when he was killed on May 22. The father, Abdulbaki Todashev, displayed photographs of his son's bullet-ridden body and demanded that the United States government explain how he was killed.
On the day of the shooting, federal law enforcement officials provided differing accounts of the episode, initially saying Mr. Todashev had a knife. Later they said Mr. Todashev had "exploded" at the agent and might have had a pipe or might not have had anything in his hands.
The shooting occurred after an F.B.I. agent from Boston and two detectives from the Massachusetts State Police had been interviewing Mr. Todashev for several hours about his possible involvement in a triple homicide in Waltham, Mass., in 2011, according to the law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing.
Mr. Todashev, according to the F.B.I., confessed to his involvement in the deaths and implicated Mr. Tsarnaev. He then started to write a statement admitting his involvement while sitting at a table across from the agent and one of the detectives when the agent briefly looked away, the official said. At that moment, Mr. Todashev picked up the table and threw it at the agent, knocking him to the ground.
While trying to stand up, the agent, who suffered a wound to his face from the table that required stitches, drew his gun and saw Mr. Todashev running at him with a metal pole, according to the official, adding that it might have been a broomstick.
The agent fired several shots at Mr. Todashev, striking him and knocking him backward. But Mr. Todashev again charged at the agent. The agent fired several more shots at Mr. Todashev, killing him. The detective in the room did not fire his weapon, the official said.
Under the F.B.I.'s guidelines, agents can fire a gun at someone if they feel the person is a threat to them or someone else. The episode is being reviewed by a team of F.B.I. investigators who specialize in shootings and by the district attorney in Orlando, the official said.
At the news conference in Moscow, the elder Mr. Todashev said his son had been interrogated for eight hours in his home on the day of the shooting because he had refused to report to an official building for what would have been a third round of questioning. He said that judging from his son's wounds, he had been shot seven times, including once on the crown of his head.
"I want justice," said Mr. Todashev, who works for the city government in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. "I want this to be investigated, so that these people will be put on trial in America. These are not F.B.I. agents, they are bandits. They must be put on trial."
Mr. Todashev, said the agents had focused exclusively on the Boston bombing the first time they questioned his son, and they raised the 2011 killings in subsequent conversations. He said his son was planning to fly to Russia on May 24 for a visit because he had received his American green card two months earlier and was now free to travel.
"Probably he was tired of these interrogations," he said. "He said, I am home; you should come to me.' That kind of conversation took place. And they came to his home."
Mr. Todashev, a father of 12, said his son was with a friend, Khusen Taramov, when the agents arrived. He said they had separated the two men and questioned Mr. Taramov outside, before releasing him after four hours. When Mr. Taramov asked about his friend, Mr. Todashev said, "They pushed him off, told him, We're going to be with him a long time.' " Mr. Taramov returned later to find the house surrounded by police officers and emergency vehicles.
"I have questions for the Americans," said Zaurbek Sadakhanov, a lawyer who has worked with the Todashev family as well as the family of Mr. Tsarnaev and his brother, Dzhokhar, the other suspect in the Bostom bombings. "Why was he questioned for the third time without a lawyer? Why wasn't Ibragim's questioning recorded on audio or videotape, seeing as he was being questioned without a lawyer? What was the need to shoot Ibragim seven times, when five fully equipped police officers with stun guns were against him?"
He also complained about the muted response of the Russian Foreign Ministry. The ministry often responds vocally to the treatment of Russian citizens by officials of foreign governments, but it has made no statement about Mr. Todashev's shooting. Much of the news conference focused on the actions of United States law enforcement.
"We will never know whether Ibragim Todashev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were criminals, because the investigation ends with their death," Mr. Sadakhanov said. "If that's what happens in American democracy, then I am against the export of that democracy to Russia."
Mr. Todashev said Ibragim had graduated from a university in Chechnya and then traveled to the United States in 2008, hoping to improve his English. He said his son befriended the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, but had moved to Florida two years ago. This relationship was of central interest to the agents who questioned Ibragim, Mr. Todashev said, adding that his son told them he did not believe the Tsarnaev brothers were guilty.
"He did not believe the Tsarnaevs did this," he said. "He said they had been set up. These were his exact words."
He said he hoped to receive an American visa so that he could retrieve his son's body and take it back to Russia for burial. He said that he has so far received no account of his son's death from American officials, and that he had received the photographs of his son's corpse from a friend who had sent them to him electronically. The photographs were published Thursday on the Russian Web site Kavkazskaya Politika.