Girlfriend of slain Tamerlan Tsarnaev friend is deported


BY Wesley Lowery

| GLOBE STAFF OCTOBER 15, 2013

The former live-in girlfriend of Ibragim Todashev has been deported and has arrived home in Moldova, she confirmed to the Globe.

Tatiana Gruzdeva, 20, had been taken into custody and threatened with deportation after she chose to speak with reporters about Todashev, who was shot and killed by FBI agents in May after hours of interrogation in his Orlando apartment.

”Yes, I came [back] yesterday,” Gruzdeva said late Monday in a short message to a Globe reporter, declining to elaborate further. “I’m fine.”

ICE officials in both Florida and Washington, D.C., could not be reached for comment today due to the federal government shutdown.

Todashev, a friend of accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was shot and killed by an FBI agent on May 22 after the agent and Massachusetts state troopers interrogated him at his Orlando apartment about the bombing and an unsolved 2011 triple homicide in Waltham.

Gruzdeva was detained earlier this year when she accompanied Todashev to a voluntary interview with FBI agents a week before he was killed.

On May 30, an immigration judge ordered Gruzdeva removed from the country because she had overstayed her visa. However, she was released in August and granted another year’s stay in the country.

After being released, Gruzdeva gave an interview in September to Boston magazine in which she discussed the details of her detention. She later told the Globe that she feared the interview was a mistake and that she was worried it had upset the FBI.

When she showed up for her next meeting with her immigration case officer, on Oct. 1, she was taken into custody and told she was to be deported.

Law enforcement officials have leaked conflicting accounts to reporters about the circumstances of Todashev’s shooting. Most versions have alleged that he attacked agents, and some have said he was armed. Some have said Todashev was about to write a confession implicating himself and Tsarnaev in the Waltham triple homicide.

The FBI has refused to comment on the reports and has ordered that Todashev’s autopsy and all other medical records be sealed and has not issued a report on the shooting.

Wesley Lowery can be reached at wesley.lowery@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter@WesleyLowery.B

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