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  • 2019-08-30 (xsd:date)
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  • to his home village of Duisi in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge and buried according to the Muslim tradition.With Berlin’s increasing suspicions that the killing was a Russian state-organized political assassination and global headlines drawing parallel with the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury (en)
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  • German security forces are investigating possible involvement of Russian intelligence in the killing of a Georgian citizen in Berlin on August 23.Zalimkhan Khangoshvili, 40, an ethnic Chechen from Georgia, was killed in what the Berlin general prosecutor said was a professionally planned, execution style operation.A prominent figure in the Chechen society worldwide over the years, Khangoshvili was a field commander in the second war against Russia, served as an intermediary between the Georgian security services and the Chechens, and more recently was involved in organizing resistance in the Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine.In Ukraine, Khangoshvili worked with Adam Osmayev, the leader of the Chechen militia fighting against Russia. Osmayev, who Russia claimed was plotting an assassination of the Russian president Vladimir Putin in 2012, survived several attempts on his life, the last of which killed his wife Amina Okuyeva near Kyiv in October 2017. Ukrainian intelligence said the attack was planned and carried out by the Russian security services.Ukraine – Amina Okueva, a participant in the war on the Donbass, during a press conference on the topic: "The war in Ukraine: Chechen mirror. Exhibition and Conversation." Kyiv, November 25, 2015Khangoshvili changed his name to Tornike Kavtarashvili and sought refuge in Germany after surviving an assassination attempt in Georgia in 2015. The Russian security services reportedly provided to the German intelligence agencies information branding Khangoshvili as an Islamic extremist and a terrorist.Based on that information, several Russian and Western media outlets reported that Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was on Russia’s official list of wanted terrorists. That information is false. Neither the name Zalimkhan Khangoshvili nor the name Tornike Kavtarashvili is included on the official list, at least not publicly. The suspect detained over the killing last week of a Georgian citizen in BerlinGerman law enforcement detained the suspected killer shortly after he fled from the scene on a bicycle, following eyewitnesses’ alert about the man disposing of his wig, bicycle and handgun -- all recovered later from the Spree River, less than half a mile away from the crime scene.Berlin’s Attorney General said that the suspect, a man of Russian nationality, 49, was brought before the court and arrested. He came to Berlin shortly before the assassination and had an air ticket back to Russia.A German security services’ source told Der Spiegel that the man refused to talk with the investigators and demanded to speak with representatives of the Russian embassy in Berlin instead.The joint investigative team of Belligcat, the German newspaper Der Spiegel and the Russian outlet The Insider discovered that the suspect used a fake identity and a fake address but travelled with a validly issued Russian passport under the name of Vadim Andreevich Sokolov. Based on the findings, the Belligcat investigation concluded, that the Russian denials of involvement in the Berlin assassination were implausible."The body of Zalimkhan Khangoshvili was delivered on Thursday (en)
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