The defendant – a 52-year-old Chechen – was acquitted unanimously by the eight jurors. The man, who had been in custody since the end of May last year, was released after the trial. The acquittal is not final and the public prosecutor did not make an explanation for the time being.
The prosecutor had accused the 52-year-old of having offered an alleged killer 50,000 euros for a bomb attack on a video blogger of Chechen origin. The defendant and his defense attorney, Peter Philipp, asserted that the conversations with the alleged murderer were not meant seriously. The jury unanimously followed this line of defense. For them the offense of the attempted determination to murder was not fulfilled. The reasoning for the judgment did not provide any further details on the decision-making process – the presiding judge could only refer to the verdict of the jury in accordance with the Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO).
Trouble over youtube video
The defendant fled his Chechen homeland to Vienna in 2004. Last year he was pissed off by a compatriot who also lives in Austria and who runs a video channel on YouTube. The man posted a post that the 52-year-old found deeply offensive. It contained statements about the defendant’s mother and wife, who had recently died. When asked by the judge, the 52-year-old only gave the exact wording for the record after his 22-year-old son, who was present at the hearing, had left the courtroom at his behest. When he reproduced the central, insulting passages, tears came to the accused and he sobbed several times.
“He insulted my mother. For our mentality, that’s worse than murder,” said the Chechen. He “didn’t know the blogger at all,” as he emphasized. He suspected that another Chechen was behind the video publication, with whom he had been enemies for 20 years.
Undercover agent pretended to be a killer
According to the indictment, the 52-year-old was out on blood revenge to restore family honor. Word of this is likely to have got around in the Chechen community. In any case, in April 2021, the deeply injured Chechen got into a man whom he viewed as a killer and who is said to have ordered an attack on the blogger. In truth, it was an undercover agent of the Slovak police who had short-circuited with his Austrian colleagues.
The defendant is said to have given this official precise instructions via WhatsApp and at two meetings in a supermarket parking lot in Vienna about what to do with the blogger. According to the indictment, the 52-year-old specifically wanted an explosive device to be attached to the blogger’s car. The explosion was supposed to “tear off his head” but not injure anyone else.
“Everything he told you is correct. It is true,” said defense attorney Peter Philipp after the public prosecutor had presented his indictment. To then determine: “It was not meant seriously.” This is also evident because the alleged killer “didn’t get a single euro,” said Philipp.
Vegetable cultivation instead of contract killing?
In his interrogation, the defendant tried to convince the jury – as it turned out with success – that he had no murder in mind. The undercover agent “offered him this. He started to play, I played along”. His concern was to get confirmation that his longtime enemy was behind the video publication that offended his family. “I knew exactly that this was not a contract killer,” the 52-year-old swore. He had “gotten into a game”, he had never intended an attack: “My plan was to grow vegetables, to deal with cherry tomatoes.”
The undercover agent was interviewed as a witness via video conference with Slovakia. “After he felt that he could trust me, he said that I should tear off the victim’s head,” said the alleged killer. The accused had told him “that nothing should be left of the victim”. He then received a photo of the victim, his address and a map of the apartment: “It was clear to me from the start that the defendant was serious.” After the second face-to-face meeting, there was no longer any contact, because the proposed 50,000 euros were not handed over.
The blogger then shed some light on the background. He had originally suspected the defendant of being involved in the murder of a Chechen man who was shot in Gerasdorf (Korneuburg district) in July 2020. The blogger reported that he posted a photo that was offensive to him, to which he responded with his video. He was not afraid of the accused.
Source: Nachrichten
