Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was on his way to the mosque when a cyclist approached him from behind in the Kleiner Tiergarten in Berlin. A shot shot down Khangoshvili, twice shot the offender from a short distance in the head. Khangoshvili was dead immediately.
The act at lunchtime on August 23 puts the bereaved relatives of the victim in fear. "We thought we were safe in Germany," says Manana T., Khangoshvili's former partner; the couple has four children.
Who is responsible for the murder? The traces lead to research by the SPIEGEL and the investigative networks Bellingcat and The Insider to Russia: A local intelligence could have ordered Khangoshvili's assassination or at least helped.
T. fears that she and her family are no longer safe in their Georgia homeland. Nevertheless, the woman and her children are threatened with deportation from Germany. Her asylum application has been rejected so far, although Manana T. reported the threat in her homeland.
She has a toleration that is currently valid until November 30th. "A decision of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees is currently out," says Manana Ts lawyer SPIEGEL. At the moment the authority is re-evaluating the case due to current developments.
Russian intelligence is said to have sent a contract killer in 2006
The threat situation is not only based on the description of the woman. A former high-ranking security official from Georgia confirms the danger situation for the family. In a letter to SPIEGEL, the man described that "people who helped the Georgian authorities to fight terrorism were threatened by Russian services, including the family of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili and his brother Zurab Khangoshvili." The Georgian official sent the letter on August 20, three days before Khangoshvili's murder.
As an example of the threat to relatives, the author mentions a case from 2006: At that time Georgian security authorities could have ordered a hired killer to murder Zelimkhan Khangoshvili. As a client, the man is said to have called the Russian domestic secret service FSB.
The former security official concludes in his letter that the family's life in deportation to Georgia is still in "great danger" today. Former and active news service have the SPIEGEL confirmed that there have been the events surrounding the presumed by the FSB killer.
Bundestag members demand residence rights for the family
The fate of Manana T. and her children is now also affecting German politics. "It is obvious that the family threatens their mortal danger," says SPD MP Uli Grötsch SPIEGEL. The interior expert demands a clear signal: "Our asylum law should protect just such people, so the case is clear to me."
The foreign policy spokesman of the FDP parliamentary group, Bijan Djir-Sarai, sees in the delicate matter also Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) in the duty. "When returning to Georgia, the security of the family is definitely not guaranteed," Djir-Sarai told SPIEGEL. The State Department "should be committed to indefinite status in this particular case".
ZURAB KURTSIKIDZE / EPA-EFE / REX
Demonstration in front of the German Embassy in Tbilisi: Murder case attracts international circles
Even Irene Mihalic, spokeswoman for the interior of the Green Party in the Bundestag, sees "a piece of responsibility in Germany, that the survivors of the victim are not unnecessarily in danger." An extended residence permit for Manana T. was also of considerable public interest, because she could be an important witness in the murder case, said Mihalic the SPIEGEL.
"This case has to be completely cleared up, because it can not be that alleged order murders in Germany are not determined out emphatically, which would be a very bad signal also with regard to the internal security."
Khangoshvili was an enigmatic figure. He fought in the second Chechen war at the beginning of the millennium against Russian troops. Later he worked for years as an informer and mediator for Georgian and Ukrainian anti-terror authorities. US services also benefited from his contacts in the hard-to-reach Caucasus region.
His work overshadowed the life of the family. In detail, Manana T. told SPIEGEL how the family was repeatedly targeted by opponents. In 2006, she reports, her father was abducted. The perpetrators were looking for her husband. Out of fear, the family then moved from a remote mountain region on the Georgian-Russian border to the capital Tbilisi. The local authorities helped to bring the family to safety.
"Do you believe us now?"
Manana T. worked as a doctor in a hospital, her children went to school. In 2015, an attack on Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was committed - several shots hit him. To date no one has been arrested or the case properly investigated by Georgian authorities. Khangoshvili fled to the Ukraine and then to Germany.
Manana T. was no longer safe in Georgia. When Poland issued a two-week visa to T. and her four children, she flew there and applied for asylum. After refusing her requests, T. fled to Germany in July 2017. She first lived in Eisenhüttenstadt, where she met her husband again. The couple no longer found each other in Germany, but remained in contact. Until his assassination in August, T. says, Khangoshvili regularly took care of the four children.
Currently, T. and her children are accommodated in a 3-room apartment in a Brandenburg village. After a language course, the physician could soon work again as a doctor. Her daughter recently finished tenth grade and begins training in administration.
T. hopes that Germany will now show "humanity" after the murder of her husband. "I do not know what happens to us when we have to go back," says T. "We need help and protection." Two years ago, she was not believed to have her family in danger. "But now what we feared happened, do you believe us now?"