The father of Ibragim Todashev has announced plans to file a $30 million lawsuit against the FBI in connection with the fatal shooting of his son.
An FBI agent in the company of two Massachusetts state troopers was questioning Todashev — a friend of a Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — in May 2013 in Orlando when he was killed under questionable circumstances.
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) of Florida will file the lawsuit against the FBI on behalf of Abdulbaki Todashev who lives in Moscow. The organization alleges that the FBI harassed year Todashev’s 27-year-old son, Ibragim, and was negligent in hiring FBI Special Agent Aaron McFarlane.
McFarlane had previously worked as an Oakland, Calif., policeman, and was the subject of two police brutality lawsuits and four internal affairs investigations.
The agent admitted to shooting Todashev multiple times after the mixed martial arts-trained man allegedly lunged at him for reasons unclear. Todashev had just allegedly confessed to taking part in a September 2011 Waltham triple homicide and reportedly implicated Marathon Bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in that crime. Florida prosecutor Jeffrey Ashton, in his report last year, cleared McFarland.
But nowhere in Ashton’s report was there any mention of the FBI agent having been the subject of brutality complaints in Oakland. Lawyer Hassan Shibley, who is filing the $30 million lawsuit on behalf of the Todashev family in Moscow, says he was deeply disappointed in both the prosecutor’s and the FBI’s internal reports.
The lawsuit against the FBI comes on the eve of the start of the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whose brother Tamerlan is suspected of killing three men in the Waltham incident in collaboration with Todashev. It’s also believed that the Waltham killing could play a role in the trial if the defense is allowed to demonstrate what they call the domination, by Tamerlan Tsarnaev, over his younger brother.
