Watch The Lives of Others. It is a film about the East German state security police. It shows, among other things, how they break people during interrogations. It shows the techniques they use to make people confess. These confessions are not so easy to obtain, since most of the transgressions they deal with are thought crimes. Once the security police decide you might be an enemy of the state, you are done. They will stay with you until you break.

Now consider this set of facts. Two members of the state security police accompany a young man to his apartment at night. They interrogate him, without an attorney, for four hours. The police say that as the young man prepared to sign a confession, he attacked them. The police say that to protect themselves, they shot the young man seven times. One of the seven bullets entered the top of the young man’s skull.

The police conduct an internal investigation, and conclude that the two officers did nothing wrong.

These facts tell the story of how Ibragim Todashev died when an FBI agent murdered him in his own apartment.

We can speculate about what happened in Todashev’s apartment that night, but we should not have to guess. No person should be subject to four consecutive hours of interrogation, even with an attorney present. How is a confession signed after an extended session in the middle of the night not a coerced confession? What threats did the FBI make to get that far?

I still cannot adjust, rationally or emotionally, to the idea that this kind of state execution can occur in our country. A young man permits FBI agents into his apartment, and four hours later he’s dead on the floor. How can that happen? By the time the internal investigation exonerates the FBI agents – what a surprise – people seem to accept that these things happen. What can you do?

To make this killing even more disturbing, it is closely connected to the Boston Marathon bombing and its aftermath, another set of events orchestrated under the auspices of the national security police state. If Ibragim Todashev had no connection to the two brothers accused in that bombing, he would be alive today. Instead, the FBI executed him with a bullet to the top of the head, a “finishing shot,” as people in the trade call it.

If the FBI has its wish, that is the last we will hear of Ibragim Todashev.

– Abdulbaki Todashev, the father of Ibragim Todashev, shows pictures of his son’s bullet-riddled body during a press conference in Moscow on May 30, 2013.

Update

At least, after eleven months, the FBI settled on a single account of what happened in Todashev’s apartment on May 22, 2013. Shortly after the murder, the FBI’s account was all over the place.

Here is a comment from the article, How did Ibragim Todashev die?

In America, never never never allow police to enter your house. Never open your door for police. If they have a legal right to enter they will break down the door. That is good because it shows that you did not consent to police entry. Do NOT answer police questions unless you think they will arrest, beat, or kill you if you don’t. More and more Americans hate and fear the police. Many years ago in America it was not like that. American police should never be trusted. They are extremely dangerous. Lots of psychopaths among American police. If you see police – fade away quickly – you are in danger.

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How did Ibragim Todashev die?