Tsarnaev Friend Unarmed When FBI Shot Him: Officials

Ibragim Todashev's death under review by several groups
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted May 30, 2013 4:30 AM CDT
Tsarnaev Friend Unarmed When FBI Shot Him: Officials
This May 4, 2013 police photo shows Ibragim Todashev after an arrest for aggravated battery in Orlando.   (AP Photo/Orange County Corrections Department)

New details are emerging on the killing of Ibragim Todashev at the hands of an FBI agent. Some officials have said Todashev, a friend of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, had a knife or tried to take an agent's gun during questioning in the early morning at his own apartment. But two officials now tell the Washington Post that he was unarmed when he was slain. One of those officials says Todashev dove at an agent, flipping a table.

The FBI has said the "violent confrontation was initiated by the individual" being questioned. Other officials had left the room before Todashev clashed with the only remaining agent, according to one version of events. Yesterday, Florida's branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called for an independent probe by the Justice Department's civil rights arm; officials say the division is investigating, as are local prosecutors and the FBI itself. "We have an effective, time-tested process for addressing (shooting incidents) internally," said an FBI spokesman yesterday; it expects that process to take months to conclude. (More Ibragim Todashev stories.)

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