A German court yesterday sentenced a Russian man to life in prison for shooting dead a former Chechen commander in a Berlin park in broad daylight, a murder prosecutors say was ordered by Moscow.
Judges in Berlin found the suspect, named as Vadim Krasikov, alias Vadim Sokolov, guilty of gunning down 40-year-old Georgian national Tornike Kavtarashvili in the Kleiner Tiergarten park on Aug. 23, 2019.
The verdict is likely to add further strain to already frayed Russian-German ties, and the reaction of new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz would be closely watched.
Photo: AFP
Germany expelled two Russian diplomats in protest at Moscow’s perceived lack of cooperation with the investigation shortly after the murder.
On charging Krasikov last year, prosecutors said they believed Russia had ordered the killing.
The suspect is accused of approaching Kavtarashvili from behind on a bicycle and firing two shots from a Glock 26 pistol equipped with a silencer.
After the victim fell to the ground, Krasikov is then accused of shooting him in the head, killing him on the spot, before getting back on his bicycle and fleeing.
Police divers later recovered the Glock handgun, a wig and a bicycle from the nearby Spree river.
Calling for Krasikov to be jailed for life as they summed up their case last week, prosecutors said they had identified him as a “commander of a special unit of Russian secret services FSB [Federal Security Service].”
“He liquidated a political opponent as an act of retaliation,” prosecutor Lars Malkies told the court.
However, in an earlier hearing, the defendant had told the court through his lawyer, Robert Unger, that he should be identified only as Vadim Sokolov, who is “Russian, single and a construction engineer.”
He denied being known as Krasikov, saying: “I know of no one by this name.”
Prosecutors say the defendant traveled as a tourist in the days before the murder, arriving on Aug. 17 in Paris where he visited sights before traveling to Warsaw. Photos of his tourist cover were found on a mobile phone in the Polish hotel where he stayed before heading to Berlin on Aug. 22.
Krasikov was arrested after the killing, which took place just minutes away from the German chancellery and parliament.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the Tiergarten victim as a “fighter, very cruel and bloody” who had joined separatists against Russian forces in the Caucasus and also been involved in bombing attacks on the Moscow metro.
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