Amid a park in the center of the German capital Berlin, a gunman approached the former Chechen military commander Salim Khan Khankushvili, 40, and shot him in the head from a pistol with a silencer, killing him in broad daylight.

Authorities were able to quickly arrest the killer, and some details and information about the crime that took place on Friday (August 23rd) were revealed, but the big questions remained unanswered.

Authorities suspect the crime may be an assassination at the behest of Russian state agencies, similar to an attempt to poison former Russian spy Sergei Scribal in Britain last year.

But all that Berlin has officially announced is that the suspect is a Russian citizen, and it does not rule out a political motive for the crime.

The Russian government has denied responsibility for the killing of Khanjushevili in Berlin, and Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said there was no connection to his death.

However, a joint survey by the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Russian insider website and the British Bellingcat website revealed some of the circumstances of the crime and its perpetrator.

Russian killer
The investigation showed that the person held by the German authorities for murder was named Vadim Sokolov, 49, who arrived from Russia under mysterious circumstances, had obtained a Russian passport on July 19, and then applied 10 days later for a visa To enter and get France in just one day, he then traveled to France on 31 July.

The investigation revealed that the passport data in the name of Vadim Sokolov does not exist in any Russian database, which normally means that this person can not leave the country. It was also unclear how he obtained the French visa so quickly, especially since he gave the address of a false residence in St. Petersburg.

The investigative report concluded that the passport number could be transmitted to a unit of the Russian Interior Ministry that in the past issued identity documents for the military security service.

Sokolov traveled from Moscow to Paris and from there to Berlin. There, he is said to have rode an electric bicycle to reach a public park in Khanushvili. He shot three bullets, two of them in the head, then dumped his Glock pistol, wigs and bicycle on the Ishbari River. While doing so, he was seen by boys and reported to the police, who came and arrested him within minutes.

The victim, a Chechen from Georgia, was one of the field commanders fighting against the Russian army in the second Chechen war that broke out 20 years ago. In 2008, he tried to assemble a force to fight the Russians again when they invaded Georgia.

The man received several death threats and survived two assassination attempts in Georgia before seeking safety in Germany, where he arrived in 2016 and seeking political asylum, but his request was rejected, and he appealed.

A series of assassinations
"The execution of Khanjushevili did not come out of the blue," writer Leonid Bershidski said in a Bloomberg article. "Russia is suspected of being behind the liquidation of former Chechen fighters in Turkey, Austria, the UAE and Britain."

"Russia is almost certainly running a secret program to liquidate the separatists," Putin vowed in 1999 to kill under any circumstances, "even if they are in the toilets."

He was not a top military commander fighting the Russians, but he is believed to have been targeted because of his influential role in Georgia's strategic Pankisi region, and because of his alleged links to prominent Chechen commander Shamil Basayev, Russia's number one enemy, who died in a mysterious explosion in 2006. He was close to former Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, who was killed in 2005.

"Salim Khan thought he would be safe in Germany," said Eckhart Mas, president of the German-Caucasian Association, who met with Khanjushvili and mediated with German authorities to give him special protection.

He told the Guardian newspaper that Khanjushevili "was taking the same route from his home to the mosque every Friday, and he must have noticed that this information had reached the killer."

He left behind three daughters and two boys between the ages of two and 17, and his body was taken to Georgia for burial.