"Fla. report on fatal shooting of Todashev to be released Tuesday" by Maria Sacchetti | Globe Staff March 20, 2014
A Florida prosecutor says he will release his final report Tuesday morning on the FBI’s fatal shooting of a Chechen man linked to the suspects in the Boston Marathon terrorist bombing.
The report is the only independent investigation into the May 22 slaying of Ibragim Todashev, 27, a mixed-martial arts fighter who used to live in Massachusetts and was a friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of two brothers who allegedly planted the bombs at last year’s Marathon.
The FBI is also conducting its own investigation of the shooting, with the US Department of Justice, but civil liberties groups and Todashev’s father had called for an independent review, saying the bureau almost always exonerates its own agents.
And your expectations shall not be disappointed.
The FBI said in January that it had completed its inquiry into whether the use of deadly force was justified and was eager to release the results after the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division reviewed them. A timeline was not given.
After all the delaying? Shows no respect for the public, a statement like that.
For nearly a year, the shooting has been shrouded in secrecy. The FBI has said only that an agent shot Todashev in his Orlando apartment after Todashev initiated a violent confrontation during an interview with an agent and the Massachusetts State Police.
The bureau and officials in Florida have refused to release details about the slaying, including the autopsy findings. Anonymous sources have leaked conflicting accounts to the media, inflaming the controversy surrounding the death of Todashev. Some accounts said he was armed; others said he was not. The FBI has said that Todashev injured an agent.
Media reports also said Todashev was about to sign a confession implicating himself and Tamerlan Tsarnaev in an unsolved triple homicide in Waltham. On Sept. 12, 2011, Brendan Mess, 24, who was a close friend of Tsarnaev, and two of his friends, Erik H. Weissman, 31, and Raphael M. Teken, 37, were found in Mess’s apartment with their throats slashed and bodies sprinkled with marijuana. At the time, their deaths were widely assumed to have been a drug deal gone bad.
Honestly, those are really some strange friends for pot-smoking(?) Islamist extremists.
Todashev’s father, Abdulbaki , has said that Todashev was a loving son who had not done anything wrong. He said he believes his son was unarmed and pointed out that he had voluntarily submitted to FBI questioning before agents showed up at his apartment that final time.
That I believe.
But Todashev also had fighting skills and a violent criminal record. He was arrested in 2010 in Boston for a road-rage incident and again in Florida, weeks before he was killed, for allegedly beating a man in a fight over a parking space.
Keep the prone to violence incidents in mind for later.
The twin bombs that went off last April 15 near the Marathon finish line killed three people and injured more than 260 others. Tsarnaev was killed several days later in a shootout with police in Watertown. His brother, Dzhokhar , his alleged partner in the Marathon attack, is in federal custody facing a trial that could get him the death penalty.
The brothers also allegedly killed MIT police officer Sean Collier.
Yeah, yeah, I know the repeated programming of the narrative.
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"FBI agent cleared in shooting of Todashev" by Maria Sacchetti and Leon Neyfakh | Globe Staff March 22, 2014
The FBI has cleared a federal agent in Boston in the fatal shooting of a friend of accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev last year in Orlando, according to two law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation.
Wow, I'm shocked.
The same officials said Friday that a Florida prosecutor conducting a separate investigation into the FBI shooting of Ibragim Todashev, 27, during an interrogation last May had also concluded that the agent committed no wrongdoing. But the prosecutor quickly denied that he had made a final decision.
A spokesman for state prosecutor Jeffrey L. Ashton said Ashton planned to review the investigative materials this weekend and make a decision by Monday. He had previously announced that he would release his final report on Tuesday.
“The State Attorney has not made a final decision regarding the investigation into the death of Mr. Todashev and he has not communicated his decision to any federal officials,” spokesman Richard Wallsh said in an e-mail.
The law enforcement officials spoke to the Globe on condition of anonymity because the reports still have not been released to the public. The Washington Post also reported that Ashton concluded Todashev’s shooting was justified.
The flurry of reports on Friday only intensified the frustration among those closely watching the case.
A Slow Saturday story this was!
Almost a year after the slaying, FBI and state officials have not said whether Todashev was armed or provided details of the alleged violent confrontation that prompted an agent to shoot and kill him in his own apartment. Investigators had been interrogating him about his friendship with Tsarnaev, one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers.
Well, he wasn't but he did have a pair of crutches because of a recent knee operation. Let's see if that merits a mention.
On Friday, civil liberties groups and Todashev’s supporters complained about the pace of the investigation and urged state and federal investigators to release their records to the public.
WTF? FBI said its been eager to get it out.
“We still don’t know what happened,” said Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. “Unless we have the documents that support those findings, mere conclusory statements aren’t really going to satisfy the public concern.”
That's my government!
Hassan Shibly, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Florida, said he wanted to read the full reports. However, the council and other groups have repeatedly raised concerns about the FBI’s internal inquiry because documents obtained by The New York Times showed that the bureau rarely, if ever, faults agents for shootings.
In Chechnya, Todashev’s grieving father, Abdulbaki Todashev, said he was reluctant to comment without first reading the report. But he said he would be distressed if Ashton clears the agent.
“If it is really true, I will be horrified,” said Todashev, adding that he is on leave from the government in Chechnya, the southern region of Russia, as the investigation continues. “It will be terrible, because everything is self-evident here.”
Harvey Silverglate, a Boston criminal defense and civil liberties lawyer, called on the US House of Representatives or the Senate to investigate the case, saying only they had the authority to force federal officials to fully explain what happened.
I haven't seen or heard a call for such a thing.
“The whole thing is very odd from the beginning,” Silverglate said. “The bottom line is I didn’t expect the Florida prosecutor to say much because I didn’t expect him to learn much. What kind of power does he have to force the FBI or the [Department of Justice] to open up its records? You know the answer to that? Zero.”
Yeah, state murder always is(?).
Todashev’s family has insisted that he did nothing wrong and was too weakened by recent knee surgery to attack the armed agent. They have also pointed out that Todashev had voluntarily submitted to FBI questioning before agents showed up at his apartment that final time.
Something that seems to be forgotten most of the time.
But Todashev also had fighting skills and a violent criminal record. The mixed-martial arts fighter was arrested in 2010 in Boston for a road-rage episode and again in Florida, weeks before he was killed, for allegedly beating a man in a fight over a parking space.
Yeah, okay, he's looking for a fight!
Florida and FBI officials have signaled for months that they were preparing to wrap up their separate investigations into whether the FBI agent’s use of deadly force was justified in the shooting of Todashev.
Ashton, who as state attorney is the top state prosecutor in Orlando, had said in December that he expected to release the information in early 2014. On March 6, he had asked media representatives to request interviews with him, in preparation for the likely release of the report.
In January, the FBI director said the bureau’s internal review had been finished for some time and he was eager to release the results as soon as the US Department of Justice’s civil rights division finished reviewing them. One of the law enforcement officials said Friday that the department is also expected to find that the agent committed no wrongdoing.
An FBI spokesman declined to comment Friday and referred questions to the state attorney’s office.
The ACLU of Massachusetts had also urged Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley to investigate the case because two Massachusetts state troopers were at the shooting. Coakley, who is running for governor, declined to investigate, saying the matter was out of her jurisdiction.
:-(
A spokesman for the Coakley’s office said Friday that she would review the findings once they are released.
State Police spokesman David Procopio declined to comment.
Federal and state investigators tracked down Todashev as part of the investigation into Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of two brothers who allegedly set off twin bombs on April 15 near the Marathon finish line. The bombs killed three people and injured more than 260 others.
Tsarnaev was killed several days later in a shootout with police in Watertown. His brother, Dzhokhar, is in federal custody facing a trial and possible death penalty.
The brothers also allegedly killed MIT Police Officer Sean Collier.
Media reports have also said that Todashev was about to sign a confession implicating himself and Tamerlan Tsarnaev in an unsolved triple homicide in Waltham.
If that were true he wouldn't have flipped out. The likely and only logical explanation would be he didn't want to sign the prepared confession the FBI presented to him and was tired of the late-night hours of pressure. Once the g-men realized he wasn't going to cave on it, they resolved the matter.
On Sept. 12, 2011, Brendan Mess, 24, who was a close friend of Tsarnaev, and two of his friends, Erik H. Weissman, 31, and Raphael M. Teken, 37, were found in Mess’s apartment with their throats slashed and bodies covered with marijuana.
At the time, their deaths were widely assumed to have been a drug deal gone sour.
Just wondering why radical Islamist extremists would be hanging around with gun-running, drug-dealing, Zionist Jews, but....
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Related: Todashev case clearly requires transparency
"Todashev reports detail a confession, then chaos" by Maria Sacchetti, Maria Cramer and Leon Neyfakh | Globe Staff March 25, 2014
State and federal investigators knew Ibragim Todashev was dangerous. But he was calm when he led them to his small, dark Orlando apartment last May. He asked them to take off their shoes and ushered the investigators inside, through the door emblazoned with the image of an AK-47.
Nice reversal by the kid. Probably pissed of the FBI guy right from the get-gun.
Over the next several hours, the 27-year-old mixed martial arts fighter chain-smoked, twitched, and eventually, confessed to being involved in the grisly slayings of three men in Waltham in 2011.
Then the room exploded. Authorities said Todashev hurled a coffee table at a Boston FBI agent, striking him in the head, and then charged the agent and a Massachusetts state trooper with a metal broomstick. In seconds, Todashev was dead, felled by seven bullets fired by the agent.
“I was in fear for my life,” the agent said. “There was no doubt in my mind that Todashev intended to kill both of us.”
On Tuesday, a Florida prosecutor and the Department of Justice ruled separately that the FBI agent acted in self-defense, offering the first official details of the violent confrontation in more than 10 months since the shooting.
Do I need to even type it? The official story?
“My conclusion, based upon the facts presented to me in this investigation, is that the actions of the special agent of the FBI were justified in self-defense and in defense of another,” said State Attorney Jeffrey L. Ashton, the top prosecutor in Orlando, in a letter communicating his findings to FBI director James Comey. Separately, the Justice Department said “there is no question” the agent acted correctly and that Todashev had motive to attack, “having just confessed to complicity in a triple murder.”
But both government reports drew criticism for being kept secret for so long and for failing to answer many other questions, such as why they did not arrest Todashev when he first confessed to his involvement in the Waltham killings more than an hour before he died. The redacted reports also provided few insights on the Waltham slayings.
But the FBI was eager for the transparency, blah, blah, blah.
Ashton relied on videos of Todashev’s interview with the investigators, materials from the FBI, accounts from the troopers and a written account by the FBI agent who was involved. The investigators were not identified in the document.
According to the Ashton report, Todashev told the investigators that the Waltham killings had occurred during what was supposed to have been a robbery. “Okay, I’m telling you I was involved in it, okay, I, I, had no idea [word redacted] gonna kill anyone,” Todashev said, according to the FBI agent’s account in Ashton’s report.
In Chechnya, the southern part of Russia where Todashev is from, his grieving father said he was appalled that Ashton had cleared the agent.
“How they could do this, I don’t know, when it’s so obvious what happened,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “I’m astonished, to be honest.”
Abdulbaki Todashev also questioned why investigators did not arrest his son, if they believed he was so dangerous.
“They couldn’t put handcuffs on him?” Todashev's father said. “Even if he had a pole, they couldn’t just take it away from him? Why did they do this?”
I think I explained why, and I wish I could say I was astonished. This has become SOP in AmeriKa, and probably always has been. It's true wherever you find authority.
Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Massachusetts, added, “If they were as sure of themselves and as scared of him as they purport to be, there are many ways that police can take precautions to protect themselves without ending up with a person who is dead.”
Yeah, but if AmeriKan law enforcement kills you, you deserved to die.
Timothy M. Burke, a Needham lawyer and former Suffolk prosecutor who is not involved in the case, said the troopers were wise not to arrest Todashev when he first confessed.
“You’re an investigator. You’re trying to get more information,” he said. “You’re not going to stop the person and say, ‘Don’t say anything more.’ ”
In an interview transcript included in the Florida report, a Massachusetts state trooper at the scene acknowledged that normally he would have arrested Todashev much sooner, since he had confessed. But he said the Middlesex district attorney’s office told him to wait until they could get an arrest warrant.
“They were instructed not to arrest him,” said Richard Wallsh, a spokesman for Ashton.
Massachusetts officials shed little light on the matter Tuesday.
Then what good are they?
Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan and Waltham police Chief Keith MacPherson declined to comment, saying that the investigation is “open and active.” The State Police refused to comment.
Rose, of the ACLU, said the continued questions about the state’s involvement are disturbing enough to warrant an investigation by state Attorney General Martha Coakley, who is running for governor.
A Coakley spokesman said she is reviewing both reports but called the Florida report “thorough.”
State and federal investigators first contacted Todashev six days after the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.
Before he moved to Florida, Todashev was a gym buddy of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who allegedly plotted with his brother, Dzhokhar, to plant the bombs near the Marathon finish line. The brothers also allegedly killed an MIT police officer several days later. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a police shoot-out in Watertown, and his brother is in custody awaiting trial.
The bombings caused law enforcement officials to take a new look at the Sept. 11, 2011, murders in Waltham of three men that Tamerlan Tsarnaev knew.
Tuesday’s reports and court records show that investigators suspected Todashev and Tsarnaev in the Waltham killings. On Sept. 12, 2011, Brendan Mess, 25, once a close friend of Tsarnaev, Erik H. Weissman, 31, and Raphael M. Teken, 37, were found in Mess’s apartment with their throats slit and their bodies sprinkled with marijuana.
Radical Islamists buddy-buddy with Zionist Jews?
Todashev spoke to investigators several times in the weeks after the bombings. But, after Todashev booked a ticket home to Russia in May, the FBI agent and the two troopers traveled to Orlando to interview him.
A wiry 5 feet 6 inches and weighing 159 pounds, Todashev had been arrested for violent incidents in 2010 and 2012 and again in early May, when he beat a man in a parking lot. By then, FBI agents were trailing him and watched from land and air, according to Wallsh.
Oh, WOW! WOW!
So the guy starting fights was a small guy, huh? Hmmmmm.
And this knowledge now that the FBI had him under HARD SURVEILLANCE!
This poor kid got caught up in the cover-story narrative of larger events, and he paid for it with his life.
By the time investigators arrived at his apartment on May 21, they had studied his criminal record and watched his fighting videos on YouTube.
“On a scale of one to 10, I believe Todashev was an eight a far as his inclination and ability for physical violence,” the FBI agent told state investigators in a statement.
But Todashev refused to meet with agents at the police station. The report said he was upset that federal immigration officials had detained his girlfriend, who they would later deport. They agreed to interview him at home.
They threatened the girl with indefinite imprisonment, then decided to deport her to keep her quiet.
At the Peregrine Avenue apartment, two state troopers and the FBI agent interviewed Todashev starting around 7:30 p.m. and stretching past midnight. Another law enforcement officer stood guard outside.
A state police trooper captured parts of the conversation on video. In one video, according to the Florida report, Todashev is sitting on a mattress in the living room, near a sliding glass door. At first he denied involvement in the murders. “Like I said, I didn’t kill nobody and I need your help.”
Time passed, he drank from a bottle of water, opened the door to ventilate the apartment. Crickets could be heard outside.
Finally, Todashev said, “I was involved in it.”
A trooper read him his Miranda rights and Todashev appeared to sign the waiver indicating he understood. “Will you guys help me?” Todashev asked.
As time wore on, the report said, he seemed anxious. He asked if they were planning to take him straight to jail.
Then he dropped his head and asked, “How much time will I get?”
But police did not arrest him. Instead, a trooper asked him to write down his confession. Todashev sat on the mattress, using a white coffee table as a desk, and started to write.
When Todashev was almost finished, one trooper stepped outside to call a Middlesex County prosecutor, leaving the FBI agent and the other trooper alone with Todashev.
Then Todashev asked to go to the bathroom, for the third or fourth time. When he did, the remaining trooper grabbed a samurai sword that was hanging on the wall of Todashev’s apartment, and stashed it behind a shoe rack, to be safe.
We were told he used it to attack at first. Then it was a knife, then a pole, then a broomstick, then....
At 12:03 a.m., the trooper inside the apartment texted the agent and the other trooper to watch out.
“He is in vulnerable position to do something bad,” the trooper wrote. An instant later, with the agent looking at his notepad and the trooper at his phone, the room exploded with a shout.
The white coffee table was “propelled into the air,” opening a gash in the FBI agent’s head that would later take nine staples to close.
Todashev raced past the grasp of the FBI agent to the kitchen, and frantically rummaged through cabinets and drawers.
The trooper followed, thinking Todashev would run out the door. Instead, he said, Todashev turned toward him brandishing a 5-foot-long metal broomstick.
Todashev raised it above his head and charged toward them, moving “incredibly quickly,” the trooper said.
Knee surgery and limited movement omitted!
Bleeding profusely, the FBI agent shouted at Todashev to stop. Then the agent fired three or four times from his Glock 23. Todashev fell, but sprang up and lunged again.
The FBI agent shot him several more times, and he fell, face down.
Todashev was pronounced dead at the scene, with six bullet wounds in his torso and one in the head.
Some bullets entered through the back — an issue that concerned Ashton, but he said it later was consistent with investigators’ description of Todashev rising to lunge at them again.
Do I even need to type it, folks? He was shot in the back!
The state trooper in the apartment praised the FBI agent and said he “absolutely” would have shot Todashev if he had drawn his gun in time. “I am certain [the FBI agent’s] actions saved me from serious physical injury or death,” the trooper said.
Ashton also noted that Todashev could have fled, but didn’t.
Cops were just outside!
“We learned much about Mr. Todashev during our investigation,” Ashton wrote. “The one common thread among all was the observation that he was, at his core, a fearless fighter.”
Little on the small side and with a bad knee, but you can always leverage that.
The FBI still has not released its review of the shooting. A spokesman said the bureau’s findings match those of Ashton and the Justice Department.
I thought they were eager, and I'll need a grain of salt if they do release anything.
“The FBI appreciates the hard work and effort that went into the reports released today by the Department of Justice and the Florida state attorney’s office,” said Mike Kortan, assistant director of the bureau’s public affairs office. “To emphasize, these prosecutorial decisions were made independent of the FBI.”
Ashton said that the FBI did not make the agent involved in the incident available for his investigation.
I don't need to say anything, either.
Wallsh, Ashton’s spokesman, attributed some delays in the Florida report to the initial failure of the FBI to turn over key information, such as DNA that proved the agent was hit in the head.
Hassan Shibly, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Florida, which has aided Todashev’s family, questioned whether they can take the FBI’s account at face value.
Never take anything this government says at face value.
“The only person who can contradict the government’s narrative is now dead,” Shibly said.
And who benefits?
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"Todashev allegedly wrote confession on involvement in Waltham slayings" by Maria Sacchetti | Globe staff March 27, 2014
Minutes before a Boston FBI agent shot and killed him last May, Ibragim Todashev was writing a confession that investigators said would detail his alleged involvement in the brutal slayings of three men in Waltham in 2011.
“My name is Ibragim Todashev,” the confession states. “I wanna tell story about the robbery.”
On a now bloodstained legal pad, Todashev allegedly wrote that he and his friend, suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, went to a house in Waltham to rob “drug dealers.” He wrote that Tsarnaev pointed a gun at the person who opened the door. They went upstairs, put the men on the floor, and taped up their hands, according to a copy of the confession obtained by the Globe.
Investigators said Todashev was almost finished with the confession when he confronted the officers and was shot.
The Massachusetts State Police said that they had captured Todashev’s confession earlier in the evening of May 21, 2013, on videos, but those have not been made public.
In the video confessions, state investigators said that Todashev implicated himself and Tsarnaev in the slayings of Tsarnaev’s friend, Brendan Mess, 25, and Erik H. Weissman, 31, and Raphael M. Teken, 37.
They never issued a death certificate for the entrepreneuring Weissman, and that makes him the lead suspect. What the radical Islamists were doing hanging with.... never mind.
Their bodies were found in Mess’s apartment with their throats slashed and marijuana sprinkled over their bodies.
Officials confirmed the confession this week in separate reports issued by a Florida prosecutor and the US Department of Justice, both of which cleared the FBI agent of any wrongdoing in the shooting of Todashev, a 27-year-old mixed martial arts fighter.
Officially, the Waltham killings remain unsolved. The Middlesex district attorney’s office has said that the investigation is ongoing.
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"Reports on Todashev killing reveal mistakes by FBI, Mass. troopers" March 26, 2014
From the standpoint of criminal liability, two reports released Tuesday exonerated an FBI agent in the fatal shooting of Ibragim Todashev last year. But the reports don’t demonstrate that the agent and two Massachusetts state troopers at the scene acted wisely that night. The killing of Todashev, a friend of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, cost investigators what may have been a crucial link, a witness who might have been able to answer questions about Tsarnaev and help solve a 2011 triple murder in Waltham that seems to have involved both men. The reports indicate that the agent’s split-second decision to open fire on a charging Todashev was understandable — but the series of decisions leading up to that point are not.
The first report, by Florida State Attorney Jeffrey L. Ashton, cleared all three law enforcement officials of criminal charges in the 27-year-old’s death, ruling that the FBI agent shot in self-defense. The three had come to interview Todashev on May 21, 2013, at an apartment in Orlando, where the Russian immigrant had moved after leaving Massachusetts. After several hours of questioning, Ashton’s report indicates, Todashev confessed to involvement in the 2011 killings, which also may be linked to Tsarnaev. (Some sections of the Florida report were redacted.) At that point, the law enforcement officials informed Todashev of his Miranda rights and asked him to complete a handwritten confession. As he wrote, one of the two Massachusetts troopers stepped out of the room to call a Middlesex County assistant district attorney. That, says the report, was when Todashev attacked.
Todashev was a highly trained martial-arts fighter. Under the circumstances described in the report, Ashton found there were no other viable reactions to protect the lives of the FBI agent and the remaining Massachusetts trooper. But the decision by the other Massaschusetts trooper to leave the room beforehand — “a deviation from the original plan,” as the Florida report put it — is mystifying. It’s unclear why that communication with the Middlesex prosecutor couldn’t have been handled by text — one of the troopers and the prosecutor had been texting throughout the evening — or after Todashev was safely in custody. After all, the Florida report repeatedly emphasized that law enforcement knew how dangerous Todashev was, and had opted to bring three officers that night for that very reason. So why would any of them take their eyes off him?
Neither the Florida report nor the less detailed second report, from the US Justice Department’s civil rights division, appears to reach any conclusion on the wisdom of the agents’ conduct. The Florida report also reveals that neither of the Massachusetts troopers had more than basic self-defense training. The FBI did not make its agent available to the Florida prosecutor for an interview, leaving Ashton unable to ascertain whether he had “defensive tactics expertise.” That leaves a question for both Massachusetts and federal authorities: Given Todashev’s reputation, were these the right three individuals to send into an apartment with him?
This isn’t simply a matter of second-guessing decisions made by law enforcement agents in a stressful, fast-moving situation. While it’s unclear exactly what role in the Waltham murders Todashev was about to confess to, it seems that the families of those victims may have lost a chance to see a killer brought to justice. Authorities should release a full, unredacted copy of the report as soon as possible, and provide Todashev’s handwritten confession to the public. Federal and Massachusetts officials must investigate whether their decisions in the days and minutes before the shooting resulted in an avoidable death.
Like we are going to believe anything they come out with.
Even if law enforcement agents committed no prosecutable offense, losing a key witness in a terrorism investigation isn’t a lapse that can be dismissed lightly.
And yet the murder of a man is.
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"Todashev reports leave Waltham wondering about 2011" by Maria Sacchetti | Globe Staff March 29, 2014
I'm wondering why the Globe editorial forgot the bad knee.
WALTHAM — The mayor of Waltham says she is frustrated by the lack of information available to the public about the unsolved 2011 slayings of three men that have been linked to one of the men suspected in the Marathon bombing.
Mayor Jeannette McCarthy said part of her job is to keep her constituents informed, but she said federal, state, and local law enforcement officials have not provided updates about the investigation and whether authorities are still pursuing suspects.
“Bottom line is, would I like them to come out and have a press conference in Waltham and tell the people of Waltham what happened? Yes, that’s what I would like,” McCarthy said this week, “because normally that’s what happens.”
*********
In October, federal officials confirmed that Todashev said his friend, suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was involved in the deaths.
But the Justice Department and the Florida prosecutor refused to say this week whether officials have solved the Waltham homicides and declined to provide more details of Todashev’s videotaped confession, even though he and Tsarnaev are now dead.
Both agencies said their reports were focused on whether the FBI shooting of Todashev was justified. The reports said the agent acted in self-defense. However, the Florida report quoted from the Todashev video and included a redacted copy of his handwritten confession.
“We were not officially interested in the Waltham murders,” said Richard Wallsh, a spokesman for state attorney Jeffrey L. Ashton, the top prosecutor in Orlando who investigated the Todashev shooting. “That’s a Massachusetts issue.”
The FBI and the Department of Justice referred questions to Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan, who is in charge of the homicide investigation. Ryan and Waltham Police Chief Keith MacPherson released a statement this week that ambiguously raised the possibility that other suspects remain at large.
“Identifying all parties responsible for that terrible incident remains a top priority for the Middlesex district attorney’s office, the Waltham Police Department, and the Massachusetts State Police,” they said. “We will not be issuing any further comment at this time.’’
Beyond the statement, Ryan’s office, the Waltham police and the State Police have not commented on the investigation. Ryan’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Chelf Guyotte, refused to answer questions about whether there is a risk to the public, saying she could not elaborate because the investigation is ongoing.
McCarthy said she does not want to interfere with the local investigation if it is still active. But she said the two city police detectives assigned to the case have not even been allowed to brief the police chief on the murder investigation since the FBI got involved, as part of its broader inquiry into the Marathon bombings.
“Normally, if there was a local event the chief of police would update me,” she said.
Meanwhile, critics say the disclosure of Todashev’s videotaped confession raises questions about whether police have solved the crime. And it renews concerns that investigators in 2011 missed a crucial link to Tsarnaev that might have prevented the bombings.
“You need complete transparency in order to regain public trust and we don’t have that right now,” said Jessie Rossman, staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. “If the investigation is closed, this information should be made public. If the investigation isn’t closed, we should at least know what is happening right now.”
On Sept. 12, 2011, Tsarnaev’s friend Brendan Mess, 25, and his friends Erik H. Weissman, 31, and Raphael M. Teken, 37, were found in Mess’s apartment, their throats slashed and their bodies sprinkled with marijuana. No one was ever charged with the crimes, and some speculated they were drug-related.
Relatives of Mess and Weissman did not respond to requests for comment. A relative of Teken’s declined to comment Friday.
Until the Marathon bombings, the slayings attracted little attention outside Massachusetts. In Waltham, area residents remember the homicides well. Police closed off Harding Avenue, a short, dead-end street. News helicopters circled overhead. But for more than a year, the case was cold.
On Friday, some residents said they wanted to know whether the case has finally been solved.
Todashev died May 22 after he allegedly attacked the FBI agent and a Massachusetts State Police trooper who had been interrogating him....
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"Mass. ACLU seeks federal data on bombing" by Milton J. Valencia | Globe staff April 10, 2014
The ACLU of Massachusetts is suing the FBI and the US attorney in Boston to get more information about a federal terrorism task force based in the state, as well as that unit’s investigation of a Florida man who was connected to one of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers.
The man, Ibragim Todashev, was fatally shot by representatives of the task force last May.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in US District Court in Boston, naming the FBI and US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz, requests records the ACLU first sought under the federal Freedom of Information Act in December, saying law enforcement agencies have refused to respond.
The lawsuit seeks documents that would explain the number and type of investigations undertaken by the task force; any records that would explain how it functions, how its duties are shared, and what oversight exists; and any information related to Todashev, who was close with the late Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the alleged bombers.
“We don’t know much about [the task force]; it’s very nebulous,” said Laura Rotolo, an ACLU staff attorney.
“No one knows how it functions and who is in charge, and I think the Todashev case is an example of that,” she said.
The FBI and the US attorney’s office declined to comment on the lawsuit Thursday.
Todashev, a 27-year-old mixed martial arts fighter, was close with Tsarnaev, and task force agents had been asking Todashev about their relationship in the bombing inquiry.
During an interview in his Florida home, Todashev allegedly admitted he and Tsarnaev were involved in a triple homicide in Waltham in 2011.
Todashev was shot and killed following that admission after he allegedly hurled a coffee table at an FBI agent, hitting him in the head, and attempted to strike him and a Massachusetts state trooper with a metal broomstick. A Florida prosecutor and the Department of Justice ruled separately last month that the FBI agent who shot Todashev acted in self-defense, clearing the agent of any wrongdoing in the shooting.
The investigations did little to explain, however, what information, if any, Todashev may have had about the bombings, or about Tsarnaev.
The FBI and CIA have come under increasing criticism for failure to follow up on warnings that their Russian counterparts gave, as well as other signs, that Tsarnaev was increasingly veering toward radical Islam. Russian authorities provided warnings after Tsarnaev made a six-month trip in 2012 to the Russian province of Dagestan.
Tsarnaev, 26, was killed last April 19 during a confrontation with police in Watertown several days after the bombings.
His younger brother and alleged accomplice, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, now 20, was arrested in Watertown later that day after a manhunt. He faces charges that carry the death penalty. He is being held without bail, and his lawyers have suggested in court records that they plan to argue that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was the driving force behind the bombings.
The ACLU argues in its 14-page lawsuit that the information about the joint terrorism task force is a public record, and that the information, including records about Todashev, are of public importance in light of the ongoing questions about the agency’s investigations. The suit questions what role state investigators played and what oversight existed from state agencies.
“The federal government’s collaboration with Massachusetts state and local police, especially through the [task force] has for years been shrouded in secrecy,” the lawsuit states. “The Massachusetts [task force] conducts hundreds of investigations in Massachusetts every year, yet little is known about their structure and function.”
The lawsuit notes that there is no publicly available list of agencies that participate in the task force, and there is no explanation for the chain of authority and protocols that govern local police officers when they work for the task force. The suit argues the shooting of Todashev raises major concerns.
“When law enforcement officials kill someone in his own home, the public deserves to know who was there, why and under what authority,” the suit states. “But the [task force’s] opacity prevents the public from getting these answers.”
They would in America.
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UPDATE:
"On Friday, prosecutors said in court filings that they have provided US District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. with information about Ibragim Todashev, a friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev who allegedly implicated Tamerlan in a 2011 triple homicide in Waltham. Todashev was fatally shot in his Florida home in May 2013 by an FBI agent while Todashev was being interrogated about the homicide. The FBI later said the agent shot Todashev in self defense after he attacked the agent with a metal broomstick. Federal prosecutors had refused to provide some of the information about Todashev to Tsarnaev’s defense lawyers, but O’Toole said he will review the information in private, to see if prosecutors have an obligation to turn it over."
UPDATE:
"On Friday, prosecutors said in court filings that they have provided US District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. with information about Ibragim Todashev, a friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev who allegedly implicated Tamerlan in a 2011 triple homicide in Waltham. Todashev was fatally shot in his Florida home in May 2013 by an FBI agent while Todashev was being interrogated about the homicide. The FBI later said the agent shot Todashev in self defense after he attacked the agent with a metal broomstick. Federal prosecutors had refused to provide some of the information about Todashev to Tsarnaev’s defense lawyers, but O’Toole said he will review the information in private, to see if prosecutors have an obligation to turn it over."
