FBI personnel walk through the complex surrounding the apartment, where Ibragim Todashev was shot and killed by FBI, in Orlando, Florida, May 22, 2013. 
 
 GROZNY, Russia (Reuters) - The father of a Chechen immigrant killed during questioning over his links with one of the Boston Marathon bombings suspects said on Thursday he plans to travel to the United States where he thinks his son was tortured and killed. 
 
 Ibragim Todashev, 27, was killed by a federal agent in his apartment complex when he became violent during questioning over his ties to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of two brothers suspected of planting two bombs at the marathon on April 15. 
 
 "I suspect that they tortured my son and that he suffered a painful death," said Abdulbaki Todashev, wiping away tears at the home he shares with one of his wives in the mostly Muslim region of Chechnya in Russia's North Caucasus. 
 
 "I will try to go to (the United States) and get to the truth," he said as he received neighbors and acquaintances paying their respects to the dead man, the oldest of 12 children between his father's two wives. 
 
 Todashev had met the Tsarnaevs when he travelled to the United States to improve his English, said his father, who works in the mayor's office in Chechnya's main city of Grozny and is said to be on close terms with regional leader Ramzan Kadyrov. 
 
 He said he gave his permission when his son asked to stay in the United States because he said it was safer than Chechnya, where separatists waged two wars with Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union and militants still fight for an Islamic state. 
 
 Todashev travelled to the United States in 2008 on a Russian passport, a federal law enforcement source said, and lived in Boston before moving to Florida, where he was killed. His father said he had a plane ticket to return to Russia on Friday. 
 
 "He shouldn't have left. He lived comfortably and his mother was very worried about him because he was the oldest in the family and she was used to him being a model for the others," said a neighbor, Malika, who refused to give her last name. 
 
 The FBI agent who shot Todashev, who practiced mixed martial arts, has not been publicly identified but is from the agency's Boston division, the Orlando Sentinel reported. 
 
 U.S. media reported that Todashev implicated himself and Tamerlan Tsarnaev in an unsolved 2011 triple homicide in a Boston suburb that investigators believe was drug related. Authorities were investigating possible connections between Tsarnaev and the crime. 
 
 "Chechens have a power in their unity and interest in what happens in their homeland. It unites them. That's the reason my son became an acquaintance of the Tsarnaevs," said Todashev, speaking in the courtyard of his older wife's house. 
 
 Todashev is one of at least two friends of Tamerlan Tsarnaev who Federal investigators have been looking at very thoroughly since the Tsarnaevs were first identified as Boston bombing suspects, a law enforcement source said. 
 
 A friend of Todashev in the United States, Khusen Taramov, said Todashev was trailed constantly for the past several weeks by agents and questioned repeatedly by phone and in face-to-face interviews which lasted as long as five hours. Taramov said he was questioned as well. 
 
 Todashev was arrested on May 4 and charged with aggravated battery after getting into a fight with another man over a parking space at an Orlando shopping mall, according to the Orange County Sheriff's Office in Orlando. 
 
 The man, who suffered a split upper lip and had several teeth knocked out of place, did not to press charges against Todashev, who was released from jail on a $3,500 bond, a sheriff's spokeswoman said. 
 
 (Additional Reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington D.C. and Barbara Liston in Orlando; Writing by Thomas Grove; Editing by Jon Hemming) ||||| The ethnic Chechen was being questioned about his ties to a Boston bombing suspect. 
 
 Ibragim Todashev is shown in a police booking photo following his arrest May 4 on aggravated battery charges. (Photo: Orange County (Fla.) Sheriff Office) Story Highlights Government source says he lunged at an FBI agent 
 
 Florida Islamic group calls for an independent investigation 
 
 The father of a Florida man with ties to Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev said Thursday that his son was slain "execution-style" by FBI agents last week in Orlando. 
 
 Ibragim Todashev, a 27-year-old mixed martial arts fighter, was shot in his Florida home on May 22 while an FBI agent and two Massachusetts state troopers questioned him about the Boston Marathon bombing suspect, as well as a triple slaying in Massachusetts two years ago. 
 
 Todashev's father, Abdul-Baki Todashev, told reporters in Moscow that his son had several gunshot wounds to his torso and one to the back of his head. The elder Todashev displayed photos he claimed were of his son's body in a Florida morgue, according to the Associated Press. 
 
 Initially, at least one law enforcement official told USA TODAY that Todashev, an ethnic Chechen, was armed with a knife or other sharp object and violently attacked an FBI agent during questioning, which led the agent to open fire. 
 
 Abdul-Baki Todashev speaks at a news conference in Moscow on Thursday. (Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko, AP) 
 
 Some news reports Thursday, quoting FBI and law enforcement sources, said Todashev was unarmed when he was shot. 
 
 Late Thursday, a more detailed government version of the incident emerged. 
 
 Todashev overturned a wooden table, forcefully shoved an FBI agent into a wall and lunged at the agent with a pole, a government official briefed on the incident but not authorized to speak publicly said. 
 
 The FBI agent and state troopers had interviewed Todashev earlier that morning, the government official said. That afternoon, when Todashev did not answer his phone, the FBI agent, the two troopers and an Orlando police officer went to his condo, the government official said. 
 
 Todashev invited them in and began talking, the official said. As the conversation continued, Todashev indicated he was ready to confess to his involvement in the homicides, so the FBI agent pulled up a table so Todashev could write down his confession, the government official said. Meanwhile, one of the troopers left the room to make a phone call and the Orlando officer accompanied him, the official said. 
 
 Todashev became agitated, the government official said. He suddenly stood and flipped the wooden table up, hitting the FBI agent, who was slammed "forcefully" into the wall, the government official said. 
 
 Todashev reached down and picked up a metal pole about the size of a broom handle and swung it at the FBI agent, the official said. 
 
 The agent fired two or three shots, hitting Todashev, but Todashev came at him again with the metal pole, the official said. The FBI agent then shot him "until he eliminated the threat," the official said. The incident happened in a few seconds, the official said. 
 
 The FBI agent was treated at the hospital for injuries, including lacerations that required stitches, the government official said. 
 
 An advocacy group is demanding a civil rights investigation into the death of a Chechen immigrant who was shot to death by authorities in central Florida while being questioned about his ties to one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. (May 30) AP 
 
 At the news conference in Moscow on Thursday, Todashev's father, flanked by Maxim Shevchenko, a member of the Presidential Council of Human Rights, said his son was never a close friend of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and knew nothing about the attacks in advance. 
 
 He called "absurd" the claims by some U.S. officials that Todashev had attacked an FBI agent. 
 
 "Maybe my son knew something, some information the police did not want to be made public. Maybe they wanted to silence my son," Todashev's father said. 
 
 He said his son was grilled for many hours about the Boston bombings. 
 
 "They tortured a man for eight hours with no attorney, no witnesses, nobody. We can only guess what was going on there, until there is an official investigation," Todashev said. 
 
 Shevchenko told reporters at the news conference that Todashev's killing looked like "cold-blooded murder." 
 
 The Florida branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has called for a federal civil rights investigation. 
 
 "We have confirmed through senior sources within the FBI that Ibragim was indeed unarmed when he was shot seven times in the head, what appear to be even in the back of the head," said Hassan Shibly, executive director of the CAIR Florida. "That's very disturbing." 
 
 Later, according to the Orlando Sentinel, Shibly told reporters that CAIR has an "intermediary" who said the FBI told him Todashev was unarmed. Shibly did not identify the intermediary. 
 
 Shibly, speaking to reporters in Orlando on Wednesday, said the group was calling for the independent investigation "to make sure excessive force was not used against this unarmed individual." 
 
 Todashev has not been directly implicated in the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and injured more than 260. The FBI has said only that Todashev, a martial arts enthusiast like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, knew the suspect when he lived in Boston. 
 
 Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 27, and his brother, Dzhokhar, 19, were named as suspects in the bombings. Tamerlan died three days after the bombings during a shootout with police that also left Dzhokhar injured. 
 
 Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was later captured and charged in connection with the bombings. He is being held at a prison medical center near Boston. 
 
 Contributing: Associated Press 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/ZgJRXs ||||| Ibragim Todashev was involved in mixed martial arts in Central Florida. YouTube video shows him fighting. 
 
 An FBI review team from Washington was in Orlando on Thursday investigating the death of Ibragim Todashev, the Central Florida man shot by an agent while being questioned about a triple murder in Massachusetts and his connection to the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. 
 
 The review team will question witnesses who were at the Orlando condo when the shooting occurred early Wednesday morning, including two Massachusetts State Police troopers and other law-enforcement officials. The FBI agent who fired the lethal shot, who has not been publicly identified, is from the agency's Boston division. 
 
 Todashev, a 27-year-old mixed-martial-arts fighter, was being questioned about a 2011 triple slaying in Waltham, Mass., federal-law-enforcement sources told the Tribune Washington bureau. 
 
 Federal officials think he and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspected Boston bombers, may have had a role in cutting the throats of three men and sprinkling marijuana over their bodies. One of the three Waltham victims, Brendan H. Mess, was described as a close friend of Tsarnaev's. 
 
 Todashev and Tsarnaev — both Chechen-born — knew each other through the mixed-martial-arts community in Boston, friends told the Orlando Sentinel. 
 
 In the wake of the shooting Wednesday, several of Todashev's friends told the Orlando Sentinel that the FBI had been questioning and following Todashev since two days after the April 15 Boston attack. 
 
 Tuesday night's interview was supposed to be his last, Todashev's friends said. 
 
 While the law-enforcement officials were questioning Todashev at the condo off Peregrine Avenue near Universal Studios, he initiated a "violent confrontation," said Orlando region FBI spokesman Dave Couvertier. 
 
 Todashev reportedly lunged at the FBI agent with a knife, and the law-enforcement officer fired. An autopsy was expected to be completed Thursday, but the report will not be made public for several weeks — if not months — because the case is under criminal investigation. 
 
 A relative stepped forward to claim Todashev's body from the Orange-Osceola County Medical Examiner, but the person's name was not made public. Friends said nearly all of Todashev's relatives are in Russia. 
 
 'Everything is a setup' 
 
 Todashev's estranged wife, Reniya Manukyan, denounced Todashev's slaying and posted photos of the couple together on a European social-media network for Russian-speaking users. 
 
 She used expletives to describe the FBI and wrote: "Killing my husband Ibragim was another prove that everything is a setup about Tsarnaev brothers as well." 
 
 In an undated photograph she posted Thursday, Manukyan commented that she "will fight to your justice," referring to Todashev. 
 
 Todashev's father, Abdulbaki, told Russia Today that his son was "a very calm" man who wouldn't become aggressive for no reason. 
 
 "Never in his life would he attack anyone unprovoked," Abdulbaki Todashev told the publication. 
 
 Although friends described him as a "good guy," Todashev was arrested by Orange County deputies earlier this month after he allegedly got into a fight with two men in an outlet-mall parking lot over a parking space. 
 
 A Sheriff's Office report said Todashev left the scene while one of the victims was unconscious on the ground surrounded by a "considerable" amount of blood. 
 
 "I thought he was wearing brass knuckles, but it was just his fist," said Lester García Baez, one of the men attacked. "It was shocking how accurate and quick his punches were." 
 
 And a former training partner at a gym outside Boston told the Sentinel that Todashev was a gifted athlete but also a "hothead." 
 
 FBI shootings rare in Florida 
 
 On Thursday morning, multiple FBI employees could be seen coming and going from the condo where Todashev was killed. 
 
 In addition to the FBI's review team, a separate Shooting Incident Review Group committee will analyze the incident, Couvertier said. 
 
 This independent review committee, which includes up to 13 members of the FBI, will evaluate whether use of force was justified. 
 
 FBI-involved shootings are rare in Florida, and none has occurred in recent history in Orlando. It was not immediately clear how many FBI-involved shootings occur each year in the United States. 
 
 In May 2010, an FBI agent shot and killed Ronald J. Bullock on MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. 
 
 The agent was helping base police arrest Bullock, who was armed with a knife. The FBI said Bullock ignored repeated commands to drop the weapon, and when he charged the agent, the law-enforcement officer fired. 
 
 The review group concluded the agent followed the FBI's deadly force policy and did not violate any laws. 
 
 Staff writers Richard A. Serrano of the Tribune Washington Bureau and Arelis R. Hernández contributed to this report. jesullivan@tribune.com or 407-420-5620. apavuk@tribune.com or 407-420-5735.
– The father of Ibragim Todashev, Tamerlan Tsarnaev's friend killed during FBI questioning this week, says he thinks authorities "tortured my son and that he suffered a painful death," he tells Reuters. Abdulbaki Todashev, who works for the mayor of Grozny, Chechnya's main city, plans to visit the US "and get to the truth." After traveling to the US in 2008, the younger Todashev was supposed to have come home today. "He shouldn't have left," his father says. Ibragim Todashev met the Tsarnaevs during his time in the US, where he went to learn English, his father says. "Chechens have a power in their unity and interest in what happens in their homeland. It unites them. That's the reason my son became an acquaintance of the Tsarnaevs." Recently, FBI agents had been following Ibragim's movements for weeks, says a friend. Meanwhile: Boston locals recall Todashev via the Herald. Says a fellow mixed martial arts fighter: "His only way to resolve a lot of conflicts was violence." FBI agents are in Orlando investigating Todashev's death. An autopsy was set to be finished yesterday, though the results may not emerge for months amid the probe, the Sentinel reports.