The father of a man killed by an FBI agent weeks after the Boston Marathon bombings is demanding $30 million from the bureau, saying it harassed his son before he was fatally shot and negligently hired the agent despite his troubled past on the Oakland, Calif., police force.
Abdulbaki Todashev, represented by the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Florida, said from Moscow that the claim filed Monday was the first step toward a wrongful death lawsuit against the bureau for the shooting of his son, Ibragim Todashev, 27, a friend of the late suspected Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
“We started this process in order to bring justice for our son and to hold accountable those who were guilty in the murder of our son,” Todashev said Monday, speaking through a translator. “He was killed in cold blood.”
The Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, and a Florida prosecutor last year cleared the agent, Aaron McFarlane, of wrongdoing. In separate reports, they said Todashev attacked McFarlane and a Massachusetts state trooper after Todashev allegedly confessed to helping Tsarnaev kill three men in Waltham in 2011.
In an e-mail, FBI spokesman Paul Bresson declined to comment.
Todashev’s claim sent to the FBI Monday said the bureau never should have hired McFarlane given his “propensity for misconduct.”
The Globe reported last year that McFarlane had settled two police brutality lawsuits and faced four internal affairs investigations during four years as an Oakland officer. In 2003, McFarlane testified in a police corruption trial, but invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination after a prosecutor implied that he had falsified a police report. After being granted immunity, McFarlane denied any wrongdoing.
The next year, McFarlane retired on a disability pension, which he continued to collect after the FBI hired him in 2008. The total payout has reached $520,761.09, California officials said Monday. Disability pensions are tax free.
The city of Oakland launched an investigation into McFarlane’s pension after the Globe’s article, but on Monday a spokeswoman said the FBI has refused to release information the city needs to decide whether to revoke it.
“The idea of a member of law enforcement breaching the community’s trust by collecting a disability pension without merit is an affront to the honorable men and women who are true law enforcement professionals, as well as a drain on limited public resources,” said Karen Boyd, spokeswoman for the Oakland city administrator’s office. “The city of Oakland has looked into the concerns raised, but unfortunately, based on the information we have been able to secure to date, the investigation is inconclusive.”
Boyd said the city would release a report on its findings.
Civil liberties groups and Todashev’s family have criticized the FBI’s handling of the May 22, 2013, shooting of Todashev. The FBI refused to release details of the shooting for nearly a year, and then asked the Florida prosecutor investigating the shooting to withhold the FBI agent’s name from his report. The Globe and other media obtained the names because the Florida report was poorly redacted.
“I was shocked to know that a person with the history of Aaron McFarlane was working for the FBI,” Todashev’s father said in an interview. “The FBI, they are doing very bad things for themselves protecting this person. They discredited themselves by protecting this person.”
On Monday Carol Rose, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said she hoped the family’s lawsuit would unearth more details about the Todashev shooting and the 2011 triple homicide in Waltham.
In September 2011, the bodies of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s onetime friend Brendan Mess, 25, and Erik Weissman, 31, and Raphael Teken, 37, were discovered with their throats slashed in Mess’s apartment. The murders were never solved and the investigation is ongoing.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s alleged role in the Waltham killings has been a sticking point in the defense of his younger brother, Dzhokhar, 21, who faces trial starting this week in federal court in Boston in the April 15, 2013, Marathon bombings and subsequent fatal shooting of an MIT police officer.
He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have suggested that Tamerlan controlled Dzhokhar, just as he may have domineered Todashev.
“There’s so many unanswered questions, not only of the FBI but also of the state troopers,” said Rose. “A lot is riding on what happened in Waltham and what happened to Ibragim Todashev. We hope maybe this lawsuit will shed light on a lot of these unanswered questions.”
Government prosecutors have said they had no evidence of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s role in the Waltham killings beyond Todashev’s confession. Tsarnaev died in a shootout with police in Watertown days after the Marathon bombings.
In the claim filed Monday, Todashev’s family said his confession was false and coerced.
They said Todashev had cooperated with the authorities and denounced the bombings, but grew agitated at the intense pressure from the FBI and other authorities.
They said authorities detained him, intimidated his friends, and arrested his girlfriend on immigration violations. The day of the shooting, the couple had argued because he could not get her out of jail.
The claim also accuses the FBI and troopers of failing to ensure there were enough officers to maintain order during the interrogation at Todashev’s Orlando apartment.
One of the troopers, Joel Gagne, had left the apartment during the interrogation to make a phone call, leaving McFarlane and Massachusetts State Trooper Curtis Cinelli alone with Todashev, a mixed martial arts fighter with a criminal record.
According to the government’s accounts, after Gagne left, Todashev allegedly flung a coffee table at McFarlane’s head, opening a gash that required nine staples to close, then lunged at Cinelli with a metal broomstick. McFarlane allegedly ordered Todashev to stop. When he did not, the agent shot him seven times.
McFarlane and Cinelli were the only witnesses, though Florida prosecutor Jeffrey L. Ashton said he conducted forensics tests before clearing McFarlane.
However, after the Globe’s report last year, Ashton acknowledged that he did not know about McFarlane’s troubled background in Oakland. Last year, the Council on American-Islamic Relations asked Ashton to explain why he did not have the information, but he has not complied.
The claim filed by the Todashev family also identified for the first time the Orlando police officer standing guard outside Todashev’s apartment that day. He was Christopher Savard, a member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the document says.
In 2000, as a police sniper, Savard misidentified his target during a hostage situation and fatally shot a mother who had been taken hostage. Savard was cleared of wrongdoing and was removed from the SWAT team, according to news reports.
The State Police and the Orlando police also declined to comment Monday.
Todashev, who emigrated from Russia, lived in Cambridge and Allston before moving to Florida. He was a friend and workout buddy of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, whose father, like Todashev, is an ethnic Chechen.
Harvey Silverglate, a Boston criminal defense and civil liberties lawyer, said he was skeptical that Todashev’s claim would clear the legal hurdles needed to move forward — though he hoped it would.
To file a successful claim, he said, typically lawyers need testimony and records that the government will not provide unless compelled to do so in court.
“I guess you should never say never,” Silverglate said. “But I think it is a hugely steep uphill climb to get a case to survive.”
Hassan Shibly, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Florida, acknowledged that the case is challenging. He said the council is handling it pro bono.
But he said the claim intends to hold authorities accountable for their actions in Todashev’s death.
“They’ve withheld a lot of information,” Shibly said. “It definitely has not been an easy task.”
The FBI has denied requests filed by The Boston Globe to say whether McFarlane is still with the FBI and whether the bureau was aware of his record in Oakland when it hired him.