The father of Ibragim Todashev, the 27-year-old friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev who was killed during an FBI interrogation in Florida, will sue the agency for wrongful death. That's according to a TIME scoop, which notes that Abdulbaki Todashev's case is getting help from the ACLU.
The FBI still doesn't really have their story straight on what happened that night (the agency is conducting an internal investigation into the matter), but the outline of the series of events leading to Todashev's death goes like this: Ibragim, at his Orlando home, faced several hours of FBI interrogation in a room full of law enforcement officials, at which point he was apparently ready to confess to an unsolved murder officials were interested in because of a connection to Tsarnaev. Then, the FBI has said both that Ibragim attacked the agents either with a knife, or a metal pole (or maybe a broomstick), or nothing. He was then fatally shot.
According to TIME, Abdulbaki Todashev, who is from Chechnya, carries around a briefcase containing what he believes is the evidence that will help him win his case:
The photographs in his father’s briefcase seem to raise more questions about the death than they answer. On a recent afternoon in Moscow, he laid them out across the table of a diner, starting with the family photos he had taken of his son with his 11 siblings in Chechnya. In one of the frames, Ibragim stands with several of his younger brothers at a boxing club in Grozny, the regional capital, where he began his training to become a mixed-martial arts fighter. In another, he grapples during a professional cage fight in Florida, surrounded by rows of American fight fans. Then his father shows the photos of his body, rent with wounds, that his friends in Florida had taken while preparing him for burial. One close-up of the top of his head appears to show two bullet holes about half an inch apart from each other. “He was shot seven times,” his father says. “In the heart and in the head. What is that if not murder?”
The father also hired a private detective to help him document his side of things, including interviews with his son's neighbors, and photographs from inside the apartment itself. The lawsuit apparently stems from Abdulbaki Todashev's frustration with other law enforcement officials as he's tried to obtain documents to support his case, including the Florida medical examiner's autopsy report. He told TIME that the suit wasn't intended to seek financial compensation.
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