ORLANDO, Fla. – An advocacy group is demanding a civil rights investigation into the death of a Chechen immigrant shot to death by authorities while being questioned about his ties to one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects.
A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Wednesday his group is asking the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights division to open a probe into how 27-year-old Ibragim Todashev died last week.
Hassan Shibly says he wants to know if excessive force was used or whether Todashev’s rights were violated.
The FBI says Todashev was killed during a violent confrontation while being questioned by an FBI agent and two Massachusetts state troopers about his ties to slain bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, as well as about a 2011 triple slaying.
The 27-year old was gunned down by authorities at his Orlando home during the meeting with an FBI agent and the two state troopers. The FBI agent was also taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening.
Public records show Todashev lived in Watertown, Mass., just outside Boston, last year.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, an aspiring boxer, was killed in a shootout with police days after the April 15 bombings. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, survived and is charged with carrying out the attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260.
Investigators have been trying to establish the scope of the plot. In addition, authorities in Massachusetts said they would investigate whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev had any connection to an unsolved 2011 slaying in the Boston suburb of Waltham, where three men were found dead in an apartment, their throats slit and marijuana sprinkled over their bodies. One of the victims was a boxer and a friend of Tsarnaev’s.
Read more: Man killed by FBI while being questioned in Boston Marathon bombing investigation
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