It has been almost three years since Selimkhan Changoschvili was murdered in Berlin.

It was a hot and sunny day when a cyclist in a baseball cap, sunglasses and gloves approached the Kleiner Tiergarten, pulled a gun with a silencer from his backpack and shot the Chechen with Georgian nationality on behalf of the Kremlin.

Last December, the Berlin Court of Appeal sentenced a 56-year-old employee of the Russian security apparatus to life imprisonment for the murder.

The presiding judge spoke of "state terrorism".

A similar case will be processed at the Higher Regional Court in Munich on Wednesday: the Federal Public Prosecutor there accused a Chechen of having organized a contract killing in Germany.

The deed was not carried out, but a weapon

Marlene Grunert

Editor in Politics.

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Frederick Smith

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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The case is not directly about the Kremlin, but about one of Vladimir Putin's key allies: Ramzan Kadyrov, ruler of the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya.

In 2020, Kadyrov's security apparatus is said to have commissioned the defendant Walid D. to organize the assassination of the exiled opposition figure Mochmad Abdurachmanow in Germany.

Before the crime was carried out, D. was arrested.

The federal prosecutor accuses him of having agreed to commit murder and to have prepared a serious act of violence that endangers the state.

There are also violations of the Weapons Act.

Assassination contract accepted only for appearances?

The Chechen Tarmilan A. will appear as the most important witness in Munich;

according to the indictment he should carry out the murder.

One could call A. a key witness – if he had ever been accused himself.

He wasn't.

According to his own statements, Tarmilan A. only accepted the murder order for appearances.

The Attorney General believes him.

The man he was supposed to shoot is an exiled opposition figure prominent among Chechens.

The 27-year-old Mochmad Abdurachmanow criticizes the Kadyrov regime in a YouTube blog and appears at demonstrations.

Even better known than him is his brother Tumso, who is nine years his senior.

Over the past five years, his appearances on YouTube and Telegram have become an important medium in exile, providing information about grievances in Chechnya;

they are being pursued by hundreds of thousands, including in Chechnya itself, where it is extremely dangerous.

The regime has declared the blogger an enemy of the state and has sworn "bloody revenge" on him.

The brothers sport beards the length and shape of which contradict the strict rules of the "Kadyrovtsy" (Kadyrov's retainers), showing that the two do not submit to the regime-controlled Sufi monastic order prevalent in Chechnya.

And both are supporters of Ichkeria, an independent Chechnya over which Moscow fought two bloody wars in the republic.