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Higher Regional Court in Munich
Photo: Matthias Balk/ dpa
It is a case that is strongly reminiscent of the "Tiergarten murder" in Berlin: a trial against a Russian living in Germany has begun before the Munich Higher Regional Court for preparing a murder on behalf of the Chechen leadership around ruler Ramzan Kadyrov.
According to the federal prosecutor's indictment, the accused Walid D. is said to have agreed to organize the killing of a Chechen exile opposition figure living in Germany.
Another man should do the deed.
Chechnya is a semi-autonomous republic within Russia, and Kadyrov is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The accused is said to have received the murder order from a member of the Chechen security apparatus.
According to the federal prosecutor's office, he is said to have already obtained a firearm and spied on the victim.
The man was arrested in January 2021 and has been in custody ever since.
The trial is initially scheduled to last until December.
Walid D. is said to have agreed to commit murder on behalf of the state.
In addition, he is accused of preparing a serious act of violence that is dangerous to the state and of violating the Weapons Act.
According to the indictment, in the first half of 2020 he was tasked by a member of the Chechen security apparatus "with the logistical organization of the killing of an exile opposition figure living in Germany".
Accordingly, the man procured, among other things, a weapon including ammunition and a silencer and spied on the victim.
According to the indictment, the target and his brother are critics of Kadyrov's leadership and advocate an independent Chechnya on social media.
"The purpose of the state-commissioned killing was to silence the brother of the announced victim in particular," the federal prosecutor said.
According to the indictment, another man selected by the Chechen security apparatus was to carry out the murder, but he "only accepted the job for fear of reprisals".
Walid D. is said to have met this man in Chechnya in September 2020 and smuggled him from there to Germany.
Both are said to have carried out a shooting exercise with the murder weapon in the Federal Republic and to have further spied out the place of residence of the target person.
D. was then arrested on January 1, 2021 and has been in custody since then.
39 hearings are planned by the end of December.
"You can place him in the tradition of Russian contract killings in Europe"
The case is similar to the »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 spoke of "state terrorism": The judges were convinced that the 56-year-old acted on behalf of Russian state authorities.
Russia has denied such allegations.
The verdict led to diplomatic upheavals between Germany and Russia.
Both states expelled several diplomats from the other country.
"In principle, the case is similar to the Tiergarten murder," said Chechnya expert Miriam Katharina Hess from the German Society for Foreign Relations.
"You can place him in the tradition of Russian contract killings in Europe."
The procedure is always the same, Hess told the dpa news agency: the target is always someone who is critical of the Russian government or the Kadyrov regime.
And then this regime looks for "a randomly selected person from the civilian population" who has no obvious connection to the Russian state apparatus.
The exciting question now is whether the Munich Higher Regional Court will make a similar decision in the new case and also establish the explicit connection to Russia, as the Berlin court did.
col/AFP/dpa