Published time: September 26, 2013 00:36
Ibragim Todashev
The FBI has harassed, threatened and even denied Fifth Amendment rights to friends of an Orlando man agents killed in May who was close to alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Wednesday.
Friends of Ibragim Todashev have told the Florida chapter of the
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) that FBI agents have
asked them to spy on Orlando-area mosques, threatening arrest if
they failed to comply.
One friend of Todashev, Ashurmamad Miraliev, was arrested by the
FBI on September 18 on a warrant for supposedly threatening a
witness in an Osceola County battery case 14 months ago. Yet
following his arrest, he was interrogated for six hours only
about associations with Todashev despite repeatedly requesting
his right to an attorney, CAIR-Florida said. The FBI agents
allegedly responded, “That is not happening.”
“Didn’t ask him anything about the alleged charges. Just
interviewed him for over six hours trying to get as much
information on Ibragim Todashev as possible,” Hassan Shibly,
director of the CAIR-Florida, said Wednesday at a press
conference in Orlando.
CAIR-Florida attorneys said they were not able to meet with
Miraliev until September 24. Miraliev remains in Osceola County
jail on federal retainer.
“It is simply unacceptable for the FBI to continue to question
our client and deny his requests to speak with his legal
counsel,” CAIR-Florida Civil Rights Director Thania Diaz
Clevenger said in a statement. “It fits the pattern of abuse
and troubling behavior by FBI agents beginning in the days prior
to the killing of the unarmed Ibragim Todashev. One can only
wonder if Mr. Todashev was denied his rights to legal council
(sic) during the questioning that ultimately resulted in his
death.”
The group said it has received several corroborating reports from
friends of Todashev that FBI agents have threatened to wrongfully
arrest them if they do not work with the agency to spy on local
mosques, Muslim restaurants and hookah lounges.
The FBI refused comment on Wednesday, reported WFTV.
CAIR-Florida has requested the US Department of Justice open an
investigation into the allegations of civil rights violations and
abuse by the FBI of Todashev’s friends.
The allegations against the FBI come a week after Todashev’s
girlfriend, Tatiana Gruzdeva, told Boston magazine that in May
she was interrogated by agents about any connection she or
Todashev had to Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Boston Marathon bombing.
Agents eventually sent her to immigration officials. She was
detained until August, at times in solitary confinement.
Gruzdeva said she and Todashev voluntarily met with FBI officials
on May 16, a month after the bombings in Boston. Once there,
agents took Gruzdeva to a separate room.
“They asked me again and again about Ibragim and all this
stuff. They asked me, ‘Can you tell us when he will do
something?’ I said, ‘No! I can’t!’ Because he wasn’t doing
anything, and I didn’t know anything.” Gruzdeva told Boston
magazine. “And they said, ‘Oh, really? So why don’t we call
immigration.’”
On May 22, Todashev, a friend of accused marathon bomber and
fellow Chechen Tsarnaev, was questioned by FBI agents and
Massachusetts State Police in his Orlando apartment for over five
hours before being shot and killed. The FBI has offered conflicting reports as
to what happened. Some sources said Todashev attacked agents,
though its unclear if he was armed. Other sources said he was
on the verge of writing a confession implicating him and Tsarnaev
in a 2011 triple homicide in Waltham, Mass.
The FBI still has not issued a report on what happened in May,
and has sealed the autopsy and all other medical
records. Massachusetts and Florida officials have said they will
not open an investigation or call for a private probe of
Todashev’s death, though a state prosecutor in Orlando announced
in August he would start an independent investigation into the
shooting.
On May 30, an immigration judge ordered Gruzdeva’s deportation,
though she was granted another year in the US in August upon her
release from detainment. She said found out Todashev was shot
seven times and killed while in custody.
“I don’t want to have any problem with the FBI. I already had
a lot. … It was the worst time in all my life,” Gruzdeva
recently told the Boston Globe in broken English, refusing
anymore interviews. “I just don’t want to have more
problem.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev died days after the marathon bombings during a shootout with law enforcement in
Watertown, Mass. His brother and alleged co-conspirator, Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev, was also shot during the encounter but managed to
escape in a stolen vehicle he later abandoned. A day later,
Dzhokhar was found wounded in a Watertown backyard during a
massive manhunt in the Boston area. He pled not guilty to 30 counts against him on July 10
in a Boston federal court.
Copyright: RT