The case is reminiscent of the Berlin “Tiergaren murder”: In Munich, a Russian is on trial for allegedly planning the murder of a critic of Chechen President Kadyrov, who is loyal to Putin.
The 27-year-old claims to have found out about the murder plot against him via a messenger. A man he did not know called him about it. “He said he had important information for me: that there was a person in Germany who was supposed to kill me but didn’t want to do it.”
In the trial at the Munich Higher Regional Court for the planned murder of a Chechen dissident in Germany, the alleged victim described on Wednesday how the assassination plans became known.
The 27-year-old said he then contacted the suspected assassin, who was housed in a refugee accommodation in northern Germany, through the unknown man who called him. He reported on the plan and that his place of residence and his jogging track had been spied on. “We took it very seriously.”
Critic of Ramzan Kadyrov
Together with his brother – a well-known Chechen opposition figure who lives in exile in Sweden – he then convinced the assassin to go to the police. Both brothers are critics of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, who is loyal to Putin. “We don’t want to live according to the constitution of the Russian Federation,” said the 27-year-old. “We want to establish a constitutional state.” He compared this struggle for independence to that of Ukraine.
In the process, a Russian is accused of having worked with this man to plan the assassination of the 27-year-old. The Attorney General accuses him, among other things, of preparing a serious act of violence that endangers the state and of violating the Weapons Act. The aim of the planned act is said to have been “to silence the brother of the announced victim in particular”.
The 27-year-old Chechen reported threats that he and his brother received from those close to Kadyrov. And fleeing west via Georgia after his brother was temporarily kidnapped. Her family was then threatened at home – for example, that the “face was dismembered”. “They visited our relatives, our workplaces, neighbors.” Since then, some family members have not been able to move freely in the country, have no passports and are constantly being checked. “It’s a prison in freedom.”
Parallel to the Tiergarten murder
The case is similar to the so-called Tiergarten murder in Berlin. A Russian man was sentenced to life imprisonment in mid-December 2021 for the shooting of a Georgian in August 2019 in the Kleiner Tiergarten park. The verdict referred to “state terrorism”.
“In principle, the case is similar to the Tiergarten murder,” said Chechnya expert Miriam Katharina Hess from the German Society for Foreign Relations before the trial began. “You can place him in the tradition of Russian contract killings in Europe.”
Asylum application pending
The presiding judge asks the witness whether he came up with all of this after he has said all of this – perhaps in order to have better cards in the asylum procedure that is currently underway in Augsburg because his application for it was rejected. The 27-year-old doesn’t understand the question at all and then shakes his head in disbelief. “Of course not,” he says. “Otherwise I would have to swap places with the accused.”
In May 2017, he applied for asylum at Munich Airport, said the man who is acting as a joint plaintiff in the proceedings against his alleged assassin. Six months later, that application was denied. In the meantime, however, even without the murder plans against him, he has “enough evidence” that he is in danger in his homeland.
Source: Stern
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