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Germany’s general prosecutor Peter Frank today filed the indictment against the killer of Chechen/Georgian asylum seeker Zelimkhan Khangoshvili. The indictment names Vadim Krasikov as the killer, and accuses the “Central Russian government” in ordering the murder last August.
Bellingcat, with its partners @derSpiegel and @the_ins_ru spearheaded the investigation into this murder. We disclosed that the killer had traveled to Germany under a fake name: Vadim Sokolov, 49. We proved that no such person ever existed in Russia. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/08/30/suspected-assassin-in-the-berlin-killing-used-fake-identity-documents/
Then we went on to uncover the real person behind the fake name. As the Berlin murder was unusual – the killer approached his victim on a bicycle and shot him point-blank – we searched for similar prior murders in Russia.
We found a very similar case in Moscow in 2013, and the killer’s name turned out to be Vadim Krasikov (54).
Although all traces of Krasikov seemed to have been purged from Russian databases, we were able to get a photo from his driver’s license – and it was a perfect match with the killer captured in Berlin. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/12/03/identifying-the-berlin-bicycle-assassin-part-1-from-moscow-to-berlin/
We discovered Krasikov had been wanted on an Interpol warrant by Russia for the bicycle murder in Moscow as well as for another murder in Northern Russia in 2010.
However, his red notice had suddenly been revoked by Russia in 2015. We surmised that he had been recruited by Russia’s secret services, and given a get-out-of-jail card in return.
Finally, we obtained the killer’s phone records and found that just before the murder, he spent a long time at FSB Spetsnaz training camps around Moscow – and visited the FSB’s anti-terrorist center many times.
He also spoke repeatedly with senior members of FSB’s Vympel Spetsnaz team. We then knew this had been an FSB-sanctioned hit job. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2020/02/17/v-like-vympel-fsbs-secretive-department-v-behind-assassination-of-zelimkhan-khangoshvili/
Following our investigations, German prosecutors seem to have also been convinced – they have now excluded all options for a crime-motivated murder, or even one sanctioned by Chechnya's leadership.
