The tension escalates between Germany and Russia. On Monday, December 20, the latter announced the expulsion of two German diplomats, in response to a similar measure taken last week by Berlin, which accuses Moscow of having ordered the assassination of a Chechen opponent in Germany in 2019.
“The Russian side categorically rejects the baseless and disconnected accusations of the involvement of Russian state structures in this crime”the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The ministry, which did not specify when diplomats will have to leave the country, points out that Russia “Will continue to respond adequately and proportionately to any attack on Berlin”. According to German diplomacy, the Russian reply, “Completely unjustified”, goes “Weigh even more on relationships” bilateral.
On December 15, the Berlin court sentenced a Russian with a fuzzy identity to life imprisonment for the assassination of a former Chechen separatist fighter, a national of Georgia, in a park in Berlin, on August 23, 2019. The President of the court, Olaf Arnoldi, directly questioned the Russian authorities, arguing that they had “Ordered the accused to liquidate the victim”. In the wake of the verdict, Berlin announced the expulsion of two Russian diplomats. Moscow, which has always denied any involvement, denounced a verdict ” Politics “.
The killer was a member of the FSB
Former Chechen separatist leader, Georgian Zelimkhan Tornike Khangochvili, 40, had fought against Russian forces between 2000 and 2004. He had lived since 2016 with his family in Germany, where he had applied for asylum.
He was a victim of“A cold blooded execution”, said the president of the court. Her murderer was named by the prosecutor as Vadim Krasikov, 56, “Commander of a special unit of the Russian secret service FSB”. The latter arrived in Berlin so “Totally invisible”, according to the verdict, by making a detour via Paris, then via Warsaw, before reaching the German capital.
The facts took place at lunchtime: the murderer, riding a bicycle, had approached behind his victim and had fired twice, using a silencer, before finishing him with a bullet in the head, to point blank, according to the prosecutor. He was arrested shortly after the fact near the scene of the murder, an extension of the large Tiergarten park.
Throughout his trial, the accused rejected the identity attributed to him by the prosecution, saying “Know nobody” responding to the name of Krasikov. Through the voice of his lawyer, Robert Unger, he claimed to be called Vadim Sokolov, to be “Russian, single and construction engineer”, 50 years old. During the trial, however, several clues came to strengthen the conviction of the prosecution as to the identity of the accused, for example a private photo of Krasikov showing two tattoos identical to those of the suspect.