[attach id=257250 size="medium"]Abdulbaki Todashev, the father of Ibragim Todashev, shows photographs of his son’s body at a mortuary during a news conference in Moscow, yesterday. Photo: Reuters[/attach]
The father of a Chechen immigrant shot dead during FBI questioning over his links with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects said yesterday the American agents responsible were “bandits” who should face trial.
The FBI has said that Ibragim Todashev, 27, was being questioned at his apartment in Florida on May 22 when he suddenly attacked an agent and was shot and killed because of the “imminent threat posed by the individual.”
Abdulbaki Todashev bitterly questioned that account at a news conference in Moscow, saying his son was unarmed when he was shot seven times. He said he suspected his son might have been killed to keep him silent.
“I want justice and I want there to be an investigation, so that these people are tried under American law,” said Todashev. “These are not FBI agents but bandits – I cannot call them anything else and they must be tried.”
I want justice and I want an investigation
He showed reporters photographs of his son’s shirtless corpse on a medical table with stitched-up, purplish wounds on his torso, arm and head.
Todashev said his son, a mixed martial arts fighter, knew the late Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev because they had gone to the same gym in Massachusetts before his son moved to Orlando, Florida, but that they were “not close friends”.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother Dzhokhar, 19, are suspected of planting bombs that exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, killing three people and wounding 264.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was 26, died in an April 19 shootout with police in Massachusetts. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is being held at a Massachusetts prison hospital awaiting trial on charges that can carry the death penalty.
US congressmen are meeting security officials in Moscow this week in an effort to find out whether the FBI could have done more with Russian intelligence on the Boston bombing suspects to prevent the marathon attack.