Boston Bombing — The Dead 'Witness': Did the FBI Send A 'Hit Man?' — Agent Who Killed Witness Had Violent Past

Ibragim Todashev was shot dead by an FBI agent in May 2013 during an interrogation
in Orlando

By Richard Luscombe
Supporters of a Chechen national shot dead by the FBI during the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombing are demanding answers after the special agent involved was revealed to be a former police officer who faced lawsuits for assault and false arrest.

The Department of Justice and Florida state attorney Jeff Ashton both cleared the agent of any wrongdoing in the May 2013 death of Ibragim Todashev, 27. Todashev, a friend of bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed during an interrogation at his apartment in Orlando.

Ashton concluded in March of this year that Todashev, a martial arts fighter, had lunged forward with a metal pole after throwing a coffee table top, and that the agent was justified in firing seven shots to “halt the immediate threat of death or serious bodily harm”.

But the 161-page report of Ashton’s investigation, the release of which unwittingly led to the Boston Globe on Wednesday naming 41-year-old FBI special agent Aaron McFarlane as the shooter, makes no mention of McFarlane’s past.

During a four-year career as an officer with the Oakland police department in California a decade ago, McFarlane was named with another officer in two lawsuits alleging brutality, faced four internal affairs investigations, was accused of falsifying reports and abruptly stopped cooperating as a witness in a trial against colleagues accused of beatings and false arrests.

A spokesman for the city of Oakland confirmed that the lawsuits were settled for a total of $32,500 without any admission of liability, and that McFarlane left the department in 2004 on a pension of $50,450 a year. He has worked at the FBI’s Boston field office since 2008.

The omission of details of McFarlane’s history in law enforcement from Ashton’s report has alarmed the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which represents Todashev’s family and which is conducting its own investigation into the shooting.

Read More