2 Reviews Clear FBI Agent Who Killed Man Tied to Boston Suspects

WASHINGTON - The F.B.I. agent who fatally shot a Chechen man in May during an interrogation about the Boston Marathon bombing suspects in an Orlando apartment has been cleared of wrongdoing by a prosecutor in Florida and by the F.B.I.'s internal review of the shooting, according to law enforcement officials.

A review by the Justice Department, which is nearly complete, is expected to conclude that the agent followed the department's guidelines on the use of force when he killed the Chechen, Ibragim Todashev, according to the officials.

None of the reports have been publicly released. The prosecutor in Florida, Jeffrey L. Ashton, has said his findings will be released on Tuesday.

The F.B.I. and the Justice Department have been criticized by civil rights and civil liberties groups for their investigations of shootings by agents.

The New York Times reported in June that from 1993 to early 2011, F.B.I. agents fatally shot about 70 'subjects' and wounded about 80 others, and in every case the agent's use of force was determined to be justified.

Since 2011, there have been no findings publicly released that deemed any intentional shootings improper.

The episode in Florida stood out from other F.B.I. shootings because typically in such cases there is no independent investigation outside the Justice Department.

Initially, there were conflicting accounts about what occurred between the F.B.I. agent and the man.

The first accounts from law enforcement officials said the agent had been attacked with a knife. Later, the officials said Mr. Todashev was unarmed. Then law enforcement officials said that Mr. Todashev threw a table into the agent and ran at him with a metal pole, and that the agent then fatally shot him.

The F.B.I. agent, who was based in the bureau's Boston field office, and two Massachusetts state troopers had traveled to Florida to interview Mr. Todashev after investigators uncovered evidence tying the bombing suspects to him. During the interview, Mr. Todashev, who had lived in the Boston area before moving to Florida, said that he and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect, were behind a 2011 triple homicide in Waltham, Mass. Mr. Todashev, however, said he knew nothing about the bombing plot.

In the weeks after the shooting, groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the American Civil Liberties Union called for an independent investigation into the shooting.

News that the Florida prosecutor had cleared the agent was first reported on Friday by The Washington Post.

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