Selimkhan Changoshvili murder case

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The murder of Selimchan Changoshvili occurred on August 23, 2019 in the Kleiner Tiergarten in the Berlin district of Moabit . Changoshvili , who was seeking asylum in Germany at the time, was allegedly shot on behalf of the Russian secret service FSB. The suspect, the Russian citizen Vadim Nikolajewitsch Krassikow , was found and arrested near the scene of the crime. The murder attracted international attention and led to diplomatic tensions between Germany and Russia . At the end of 2019, the Federal Prosecutor took over at the Federal Court of Justicethe case because of its special importance. In June 2020, the Attorney General brought charges against Krassikow, calling the act a contract killing and referring to the government of the Russian Federation as the mastermind behind the contract killing .

On October 7, 2020, the trial of the alleged murderer began before the Berlin Superior Court . The end of the process was originally planned for March 2021. On December 15, 2021, the Berlin Court of Appeal sentenced the defendant Krassikow to life imprisonment .

Selimchan Changoshvili

Zelimkhan Sultanowitsch Changoschwili ( Georgian ზელიმხან სულთანოვიჩი ხანგოშვილი , Russian Зелимхан Султанович Хангошвили , English transcription Zelimkhan Sultanovich Khangoshvili * 1979 in Duisi , akhmeta municipality , Georgian SSR ), also known as Tornike Kavtarashvili came from the Pankisi and belonged to the Chechen minority in Georgia ( Boxes ) on. He fought in the Second Chechen War as the commander of Chechen militias against Russia and was therefore wanted by Russian authorities as a terrorist from 2002 onwards. Changoshvili was also one of the supporters of the Caucasus emirate . He then returned to Georgia and worked as an "informant and mediator for Georgian and Ukrainian anti-terrorism agencies" and US secret services. During the Caucasus War in 2008 , he led a unit of 200 volunteers from the Pankissi Valley on the Georgian side, but was not used in combat operations against Russian troops. In August 2012 he was used as a mediator between militant Islamists and Georgian security forces in the Georgian Lopota Valley.

In 2009 a poison attack is said to have been carried out on Changoshvili for the first time. According to Vladimir Putin , Changoshvili is said to have been involved in attacks on the Moscow Metro . Changoshvili denied any responsibility for war crimes. He told the Georgian media: “ The Russians blame me for many things, including terrorist attacks. This is a lie. No one can provide evidence that any civilian was killed or injured in any of my actions! ". On May 28, 2015, an unknown perpetrator in Tbilisi, Georgia fired a total of eight shots at Changoshvili, who was hit by four projectiles but survived.

Changoshvili then fled with his family to Ukraine, where there was another alleged attack. He then came to Germany, where he applied for asylum in January 2017 . This application was initially rejected. After a lawsuit, he was granted temporary right to stay. He used several pseudonyms out of fear of further assassinations , including Tornike Kavtaradze. The German security authorities temporarily classified Changoshvili as a threat because he allegedly had connections to the Islamist scene. However, this assessment was later revised.

Russian President Putin accused the German authorities of failing to extradite the “criminal and murderer” despite requests to do so. In fact, there was no such request for extradition.

assassination

Changoshvili was killed on August 23, 2019 at around 12 noon in the Kleiner Tiergarten in Berlin-Moabit by a man on a bicycle with two shots from close range in the head and back. The shooter used a 9mm Glock 26 pistol with a silencer . A little later he was seen throwing the murder weapon, his bicycle and a wig into the Spree . On the basis of evidence from witnesses, a suspect was arrested in the park a short time later. He was carrying 3,700 euros in cash in a neck pouch.

Changoshvili was buried in his native village in Georgia.

Background, investigation, indictment and political reactions

At the beginning of December 2019, new information about the suspect's identity became public. The suspect was on August 17, six days before the crime, with a passport in the name of Vadim Andreevich Sokolov (Vadim S.), a 49-year-old Russian from Irkutsk , from Moscow to Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle flown. However, no person with this name could be found in the Russian passport databases. Research by Der Spiegel , Bellingcat and The Insider revealed that his passport number was linked to the passports issued by the Russian Interior Ministry for secret agents, including those of the alleged assassins of Sergei Skripal . To enter the Schengen area , he used a visa that identified him as a civil engineer employed by the St. Petersburg company ZAO RUST . Later investigations showed that the company was in "reorganization" after its entry in the Russian Commercial Register and that the company had the same telephone number as companies of the Russian Defense Ministry . Vadim S. flew from Paris to Warsaw on August 20, 2019 and booked a hotel room there until August 26, 2019. However, he left the room on August 22 and had booked a return flight to Moscow on August 25. Investigators assume that he received the murder weapon in Warsaw.

The investigative research network Bellingcat came to the conclusion that Vadim S. was in reality Wadim Nikolayevich Krassikow , born in August 1965 in what was then the Kazakh Socialist Soviet Republic ; Investigative authorities later came to the same conclusion. Vadim S. (then Vadim K.) was also named as a suspect in the murder of a Russian businessman on June 19, 2013 in Moscow. The murder was recorded by a surveillance camera: A cyclist murdered the businessman from behind with a shot in the head. The Russian Interpol wanted notification of April 23, 2014 against Vadim K. was deleted on July 7, 2015 without explanation. Investigations by Bellingcat suggest that Vadim K. was a member of the elite Wympel unit . Police investigations into the murder in Berlin revealed that Vadim S. and Vadim K. were the same person. This knowledge is supported inter alia. on an official mug shot of Vadim K., on which Vadim S. can be recognized. ARD security expert Michael Götschenberg said that there were further cross-connections between the two personalities that were "typical for secret service legendations ". Photos of tattoos and skin artifacts published later support the thesis that Vadim S. and Vadim K. are one person. There were probably no personal connections between Vadim S. and Changoshvili.

After a German secret service received information about the accused being planned to be poisoned almost three months after the crime, he was transferred to a prison hospital for his protection .

On December 4, 2019, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office took over the investigation into the case. This was justified by saying “that there were sufficient factual indications that the killing of Tornike K. [= Selimchan Changoshvili] was carried out either on behalf of government agencies of the Russian Federation or those of the Chechen Autonomous Republic as part of the Russian Federation. “On the same day, at the instigation of the Federal Foreign Office, two employees of the GRU military intelligence service were expelled from the Russian embassy in Berlin in connection with the country's investigations .

The German government spoke of a “warning shot” in this regard and justified the step with the fact that Russian authorities had not yet cooperated in investigating the murder. On December 6, 2019, the German government submitted a request for mutual legal assistance to the Russian Public Prosecutor General . A spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry called the deportation "unfriendly and baseless" and announced retaliatory measures.

On December 6, 2019 reported several media, the Federal Intelligence Service had received a credible indication of what a Russian intelligence would try Vadim S. remand to kill targeted to possible statements to prevent him. Thereupon it was moved from the JVA Moabit to the high security wing of the JVA Tegel .

On December 12, 2019, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced the expulsion of two German diplomats from Russia. A Russian government spokesman described the move as "inevitable" and a "standard diplomatic process".

In February 2020, Bellingcat suspected that the operation had been supported by the FSB with training and a false ID .

In June 2020, the Attorney General brought charges against a Russian citizen, called the crime a contract murder and referred to the government of the Russian Federation as the mastermind behind the contract murder. According to the prosecution, Changoshvili’s opposition to the Russian central state, the governments of its autonomous republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia and the Georgian government was the background to the killing contract. This was followed by a conversation between the Russian ambassador in Germany and the Federal Foreign Office . The prosecution also names Roman D. as a possible accomplice. Analysis by Bellingcat confirms that more than one person was involved in the murder and identified one of them. Bellingcat also points out that false information about the identity of the suspects was deliberately distributed.

At the beginning of December 2021, the Federal Prosecutor's Office demanded that the defendant be sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and that the particular gravity of the guilt be determined.

The Berlin Court of Appeal found the accused guilty of murder and illegal possession of weapons on December 15, 2021, and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The State Security Senate saw it as proven that the accused acted on behalf of the Russian state. The judges also recognized the particular gravity of the guilt . The Russian ambassador to Germany described the condemnation as politically motivated . Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock spoke after the verdict of a "serious violation of German law and the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany" and expelled two Russian diplomats from the Berlin embassy ( persona non grata ) who are assigned to the FSB secret service .

evaluation

The murder fits in with a number of other murders of Chechens, mostly in exile, in which the involvement of the Russian secret service or state organs is assumed or appears likely. These include, for example, the murder of the two Chechen ex-presidents Selimchan Abdumuslimowitsch Jandarbijew (on February 13, 2004 in Doha ) and Aslan Aliyevich Maschadow (on March 8, 2005 in Tolstoy-Yurt ), the murder of Umar Israilov on January 13, 2009 in Vienna , the murder of Sulim Bekmirsajewitsch Jamadajew on March 30, 2009 in Dubai and the murder of Amina Okujewa on October 30, 2017 in Hlewacha . The Russian secret service is doing this "to demonstrate to opponents of Russia that they are nowhere safe".

Other assassinations allegedly carried out by the Russian secret service on Western European soil occurred, for example, in London in 2006 and 2018, where Alexander Walterowitsch Litvinenko and Nikolai Alexejewitsch Gluschkow were murdered. On March 23, 2013, Putin critic Boris Abramowitsch Berezovsky was found dead in the bathroom of his house in Ascot, hanged on a cashmere shawl. The two poison attacks in 2015 in Sofia on Emilian Gebrew and in 2018 in Salisbury on Sergei Viktorovich Skripal and his daughter were not fatal .

The New York Times and the news magazine Der Spiegel named GRU unit 29155 , allegedly headed by Major General Andrei Averyanov , as likely responsible for most of these attacks.


See also

Web links

Individual evidence

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  32. ↑ zeit.de December 3, 2019: Did the Kremlin order a murder in the middle of Berlin?
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