By Nick Barrickman and Barry Grey, wsws.org
Ibragim Todashev’s father seeking (futilely) justice.
Abdulbaki Todashev, the father of slain Boston Marathon bombing witness Ibragim Todashev, released an open letter to President Obama last week pleading for justice and asking the president to ensure that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) not interfere with his investigation into the killing.
In the letter, the elder Todashev accused the FBI of murdering his son in order to prevent him from testifying in court.
Ibragim Todashev, 27, was shot to death at his Orlando, Florida apartment last May by FBI agents who were interrogating him about his ties to Tamerlan Tsarnaev. An ethnic Chechen like Todashev, Tamerlan Tsarnaev is alleged to have carried out the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombings along with his younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Three people were killed and another 264 injured in the terrorist bombings.
Young Todashev: Interrogated with terminal prejudice. Chalk up one more death to a lawless empire.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed by police on April 19. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured and faces a possible death sentence on charges of using weapons of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property resulting in death.
[pullquote][As usual, the filthy and complicit] establishment media have imposed a virtual wall of silence on the extraordinary death of Todashev, which has continued in relation to the open letter to Obama from his father.[/pullquote]
The death of Ibragim Todashev remains unexplained more than seven months after the event. Initially, it was alleged that Todashev had lunged at officials, wielding a knife, during the interrogation, upon implicating himself and Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a 2011 triple killing in Waltham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, where the two had been acquainted. Government officials subsequently acknowledged that Todashev had not been armed when he was fatally shot.
Authorities have refused to release the name of the FBI agent who shot and killed the unarmed Todashev at point-blank range, and the FBI has blocked the release of the autopsy report. No charges have been filed and no one has been arrested for what was evidently a state murder.
The establishment media have imposed a virtual wall of silence on the extraordinary death of Todashev, which has continued in relation to the open letter to Obama from his father.
In the letter, Abdulbaki wrote: “My reaching out to you is dictated by the calling of my soul and the unsubsiding pain of the father who has lost his guiltless son to a violent shooting death…
Apparently he was shot in the head and the back as well as in the chest. The whole thing remains intentionally murky.
“Did my son know that he had the right to remain silent or did he have rights at all, including the right to live? Being a citizen of another country he might not be aware of the laws as he was only 27 years old and wanted to live so much. No, they left no chances for him, inflicting 13 gunshot wounds and multiple hematomas on his body…
“They did it deliberately so that he can never speak and never take part in court hearings. They put pressure on my son’s friends to prevent them from coming to the court and speaking the truth.”
The letter concluded: “I rely on you, Mr. President, and hope that the prosecutor’s office and the court do not let the agencies conducting internal investigation on this case prevent the truth from coming to light so that at least some part of our grief, caused by the murder of our son, is relieved, and that the murderers stand trial instead of sit in their desk chairs.”
Included with the letter were postmortem photographs of Ibragim Todashev, showing in graphic detail the numerous bullet wounds inflicted to his head and torso.
When asked by reporters about the administration’s plans to respond, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlyn Hayden said that “[W]e have just received Mr. Todashev’s letter and will be reviewing it to determine the appropriate follow-up.” Hayden referred all further questions to the FBI.
Abdulbaki Todashev initially ventured to the US in the immediate aftermath of his son’s killing with the intention of uncovering the reasons for the death, announcing his own private investigation in August. This was meant to coincide with an investigation being conducted by the FBI. Nothing has come of reported official investigations, with authorities at both the federal and state level repeatedly stonewalling attempts to obtain information.
Instead, authorities have taken to intimidating the family and friends of those associated with Todashev. In October, the former live-in girlfriend of Todashev, Tatiana Gruzdeva, was deported to her native Moldova after she gave an interview to Boston Magazine questioning the FBI’s killing of her fiancée. Another friend of Todashev was taken into custody while being denied access to an attorney.
The murder of Todashev and the subsequent government-media cover-up raise the very real possibility that the young man was killed because he was in a position to reveal facts about Tamerlan Tsarnaev that would be highly embarrassing to the US government and various intelligence and police agencies. Todashev may have had information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s links to Islamist separatist terrorists in the Russian Caucasus as well as his relations with the FBI and other US state agencies.
No explanation has been given for the fact that the FBI and CIA had warnings, well in advance of the Boston bombings, of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s radical Islamist leanings, having been alerted by Russian authorities in 2011 as well as, according to some reports, by Saudi officials. The FBI says it conducted an investigation of Tsarnaev, questioning him and other family members, and gave him a clean bill of health.
The elder Tsarnaev brother was taken off a federal watch list in 2012 and permitted to travel to Dagestan, neighboring Chechnya, where he reportedly established links to radical Islamist separatist movements. The Tsarnaev family maintained links to Chechen rebels and the US government through the Congress of Chechen International Organizations, set up by Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of Tamerlan and Dhzokhar. That outfit was run from the suburban Washington DC home of Graham Fuller, former vice-chairman of the US National Security Council. (See: “Who is Ruslan Tsarni”).
Last May, the Boston police commissioner and a top Massachusetts Homeland Security official told a congressional panel that local and state police were never informed by the FBI or the federal Homeland Security Department, in advance of the Boston Marathon, an international event that draws tens of thousands of people to downtown Boston, of warnings about Tamerlan Tsarnaev or the investigation carried out by the FBI. This was despite the presence of state and local police officials on a joint terrorism task force for the region that included the FBI, Homeland Security and other federal agencies.
The Boston Marathon bombings were seized upon by the federal government to impose an unprecedented lockdown of Boston and its environs, during which the streets were occupied by heavily armed troops and police and patrolled by machine gun-mounted armored vehicles, while military helicopters flew overhead. Residents were ordered to say indoors and warrantless house-to-house police searches were conducted throughout entire neighborhoods.
The terror attack, carried out by people who had been closely monitored by the FBI and were known to the CIA, became the occasion for imposing de facto martial law and testing out plans previously drawn up to impose dictatorial control over major American cities.
The authors also recommend:
The state killing of Ibragim Todashev
[3 June 2013]
