Father Of Chechen Killed In Florida Says His Son Was Executed

NPR | By Scott Neuman

Published May 30, 2013 at 3:57 PM EDT

Abdul-Baki Todashev, father of Ibragim Todashev, shows pictures he says are of his son's bullet-riddled body, at a news conference in Moscow on Thursday.

The father of the Chechen immigrant who was killed in Florida during an FBI interrogation over his ties to one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects says his son was killed execution-style.

At a news conference in Moscow, Abdul-Baki Todashev showed reporters 16 photos he said were of his son, Ibragim, in a Florida morgue.

"I want justice. I want an investigation," Todashev said. "They come to your house like bandits, and they shoot you."

He said the pictures were taken by his son's friend, Khusen Taramov, and that they showed six gunshot wounds to the torso and one to the back of his head. The photos could not be immediately authenticated.

Todashev told reporters that he'd applied for a visa to retrieve his son's body from the United States but that he'd heard nothing officially from U.S. authorities about the shooting.

The FBI says Ibragim, 27, was killed at his Orlando home when an interrogation about his ties to Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev turned violent. Authorities say they were also questioning Todashev about a 2011 triple slaying in Waltham, Mass., that police suspect Tsarnaev may have been involved in.

Todashev's father said his son was "100 percent unarmed" during the May 22 questioning.

Despite earlier accounts of the incident that suggested Todashev had a weapon, two law enforcement officials told The Washington Post on Wednesday that he was not armed. His father said that he was shot seven times. The FBI has said that he attacked an agent, just moments after confessing to his part in the Waltham slayings.

Greg Comcowich, a spokesman for the Boston FBI, declined to comment Thursday on the elder Todashev's claim that his son was unarmed, according to The Associated Press.

Todashev said his son moved to the U.S. in 2008 on a student-exchange program and met Tsarnaev three years later at a boxing gym in Massachusetts. The following year, he said, his son moved to Florida. He said his son and Tsarnaev were "not particularly close friends."