It was 11:58 am on Friday, 23 August, when a Georgian national was shot dead by a man on a bicycle in a small park in the Moabit district of Berlin. Although the place is known to be used by drug traffickers, the profile of the victim and the nationality of the main suspect - a Russian - suggest that the killing would have political motives.
The German authorities have also acknowledged, Sunday, August 25, not to exclude any runway, including that of a hitman acting on the orders of a foreign intelligence service. "If this track proved to be justified, it would be a national scandal," writes the German weekly Spiegel. Berlin has no desire to have its own Skripal affair on its hands, named after the former Russian double agent who escaped in England in 2018 to an assassination attempt allegedly organized by the Russian secret services . This episode had thrown a diplomatic chill between London and Moscow.
Well known Russian intelligence
For now, German investigators seem to lean towards the hypothesis "of a murder commissioned and executed professionally," says the magazine, citing sources close to the investigation. A witness at the scene told Berliner Morgenpost, one of the leading dailies in the German capital, that the killing had made him think of an "execution". The killer shot two bullets into the victim's head. A very detailed description of the gunman allowed the police to quickly apprehend the suspect, a 49-year-old Russian national from Chechnya.
The thesis of a murder with political ramifications is mainly due to the personality of the victim. The 40-year-old Georgian was close to the security services of his country and would have helped to combat Russian influence in Georgia, according to information collected by Spiegel. Georgian of Chechen origin, he also participated in the second Chechnya war (1999-2000) alongside the separatists against the Russian army, then in guerrilla operations until 2005, according to EMC, a Georgian organization human rights, funded in part by European funds.
This activism has earned the victim to be in the sights of Russian intelligence. In 2008, he was named by the Russian secret service, the FSB, as the leader of an Islamist terrorist group, recalls the German daily Tageszeitung.
Several assassination attempts
This Georgian has also been the target of several assassination attempts since the end of the 2000s. In 2009, he survived poisoning, then in 2015 he was severely wounded in the arm during an armed ambush in Tbilisi. the capital of Georgia. After this episode, he takes refuge in Ukraine where he also receives death threats. At the end of 2016, he decides to go with his family to Germany, where he applies for asylum.
At first, the German authorities considered this practicing Muslim as a radical Islamist and watched him until 2018, when they revised their judgment. Contacted by the German media, relatives of the victim assured that he was not a religious fanatic, having even, in the past, deterred several young Georgians to join the Islamic State terrorist organization in Syria.
The first elements of the investigation also seem to indicate that this murder is not a banal settlement. The main suspect had just arrived from Russia and had already organized everything to leave immediately, learned Spiegel magazine. The weapon he used was equipped with a silencer, and he had parked a motorcycle at the entrance of the park to be able to leave the place as soon as possible, indicates, meanwhile, the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
These are all elements taken very seriously by the German authorities. The Attorney General's office said on Monday (August 26th) that it had contacted the Berlin investigators. It is this federal agency that has the authority to investigate the actions of foreign intelligence agents.