The Washington Post said on Friday that according to law enforcement officials, a Florida prosecutor has cleared the unnamed Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who had fatally shot Ibragim Todashev during an inquiry about Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The announcement of State Attorney Jeffrey Ashton about the findings of the mixed martial arts fighter's death will yet to be revealed on Tuesday next week.
CNN said that the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department also made an independent probe about the circumstances that led to the FBI shooting Todashev. The division's review is expected to be released next week as well, said Yahoo! News.
The Wall Street Journal said a skirmish had happened between the FBI agent and Todashev during the latter's home. Federal officials have insisted that Todashev implicated himself and Tsarnaev during the inquiry made by the FBI agent. The newspaper recalled that when the agent and a Massachusetts state trooper pressed Todashev to draw up a written statement regarding his link to Tsarnaev, the MMA fighter jumped up from where he was and threw a coffee table, which knocked the agent back. Todashev allegedly grabbed a metal bar and dashed towards the agent that the agent deemed was an attack. The agent drew out his gun and fired Todashev and killed him then.
Earlier, an FBI spokesman was quoted by the New York Times, who said that the bureau reviews internally all shooting incidents that involve their agents. However, the paper said that the outcome of such reviews are always in favor of the agents, saying, "[I]f such internal investigations are time-tested, their outcomes are also predictable: from 1993 to early 2011, F.B.I. agents fatally shot about 70 ‘subjects' and wounded about 80 others - and every one of those episodes was deemed justified, according to interviews and internal F.B.I. records obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit."
