The murder in broad daylight in the German capital on Friday may have been motivated politically, Poland’s onet.pl news website reported.
It cited Georgia’s Human Rights Education and Monitoring Centre as saying that the slain man, identified as Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, fought in the Second Chechen War against Russian forces as a commander from 2001 to 2005.
He later worked at the anti-terror department of the Georgian Ministry of the Interior, onet.pl reported, citing the Georgian nongovernmental organisation.
Onet.pl quoted the NGO as saying that the 40-year-old Georgian was shot in the head while he was on his way to a mosque in Berlin on August 23.
The Polish website also cited the Ekho Kavkaza (Echo of the Caucasus) website as reporting that Khangoshvili fought in the Second Chechen War on the side of the Chechen separatists and that Russia issued an arrest warrant for him at the time.
The Second Chechen War was fought from 1999 to 2009.
The Polish website quoted independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta as reporting that Khangoshvili was in 2015 injured in the Georgian capital Tbilisi after someone opened fire on a car he was traveling in.
After that apparent assassination attempt, Khangoshvili left for Ukraine together with his family and subsequently moved to Germany, Novaya Gazeta has reported, according to onet.pl.
According to the Ekho Kavkaza website, Khangoshvili applied for political asylum in Germany, onet.pl reported.
The Polish news website cited Ukraine’s Radio Svoboda as reporting that Khangoshvili believed that Russian authorities were behind the attempt to kill him in Tbilisi.
Meanwhile, according to Germany’s Spiegel Online website, Khangoshvili worked with Georgian security services to "fight Russian influence" in the region, onet.pl also said.
The Polish website reported that the 49-year-old Russian suspect attempted to escape the crime scene in Berlin by bike after he fired a shot at Khangoshvili.
But police managed to capture the man, and they also found the murder weapon—a gun that he threw into the Spree River, which flows through central Berlin, onet.pl reported.
Investigators take photographs in a tent at the site of the murder in the German capital. Photo: EPA/CLEMENS BILAN
(gs/pk)
Source: onet.pl