The Strange Death of a Chechen Tied to the Boston Terrorists

The interrogation was not supposed to degenerate. When three FBI agents and the police entered the apartment of Ibragim Todashev in the early morning hours of May 22, 2013, it was not about arresting this 27-year-old Chechen from Orlando, Fla., but about knowing why he just cancelled his trip to Chechnya, planned long ago.

With bowl-cut, black hair and a nose deformed by years of practicing combat sports, Todashev had already been interrogated by the FBI repeatedly about his ties to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two perpetrators of the April 15 attack at the Boston marathon, along with his younger brother Dzhokhar, killed four days later on the run. The two Chechens share in common practicing martial arts, frequenting Islamic preachers and having spoken to each other a month before the attack. Todashev had mentioned his imminent trip to Chechnya before abandoning it suddenly, drawing the attention of investigators to the trace of implications around the brothers Tsarnaev.

According to the FBI’s story, around midnight the talk began normally when Todashev threw himself on the special agent across from him. In the melee, the latter managed to pull out his revolver and took aim at his assailant. Todashev was killed on the spot. “Our agent acted on an imminent threat,” stated Orlando-based FBI spokesman Paul Bresson.

Mere Acquaintances

What talks unhinged the Chechen, who had been charged May 4 with aggravated battery with great bodily harm after an unrelated altercation with a driver in the parking lot of a shopping mall? “He had been interrogated like other people residing in the same building,” said John Miller of CBS, a former FBI assistant director, “but the interest in him was higher because of a couple of factors: He was in contact with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, he had been to Boston to visit him and he was planning a trip to Chechnya.”

The two were “only casual acquaintances,” assured a Chechen friend of the latter, Khusn Taramiv. A Welsh television channel however assured viewers on the morning of May 22 that Todashev had acknowledged to investigators his being tied to the 2011 murder of three men in an apartment in Waltham, Mass. One of the victims, found with his neck slashed, body covered in marijuana, was Brendan Mess, the supposed best friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Todashev and Taramiv had just been interrogated together May 21 concerning their eventual role in the terrorist plans of the brothers Tsarnaev. “They were talking to us, both of us, right?” said Taramiv, “and they said they need him for a little more, for a couple more hours, and I left, and they told me they’re going to bring him back. They never brought him back.”

Todashev, he added, had confided in him that “he felt inside that he was going to get shot” by the FBI. An internal inquiry was ordered to retrace the precise circumstances of the shooting.