Georgian citizen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, who was killed in Berlin last August, participated in the preparation of the terrorist attack in the Moscow metro and in Beslan in 2004, and in 2013 organized a channel for the supply of terrorists from the Pankisi Gorge of Georgia to Syria via Turkey. This was announced on October 10 by a RIA Novosti source in the Russian power structures, familiar with the materials of the criminal cases.
“In 2013, living on the territory of Georgia, Khangoshvili served as a regional coordinator in the structure of the international terrorist organization“ Imarat Kavkaz ”(banned in Russia), kept in touch between Doku Umarov (Chechen terrorist. – Ed.) And foreign representatives of this organization,” – the agency quotes the words of the interlocutor.
As for the Moscow terrorist attack, we are talking about the explosion of a train in February 2004 between the Avtozavodskaya and Paveletskaya metro stations.
On October 7, the Berlin prosecutor’s office brought charges against the Russian citizen Vadim Sokolov of the murder of Khangoshvili and illegal possession of a semi-automatic firearm.
According to the investigation, the accused, disguised as a tourist, arrived in Paris from Moscow on August 17, 2019. After that, he headed to Berlin, where a murder victim applied for asylum in 2016. On the day of the crime, according to law enforcement officers, the attacker approached his victim from behind and shot him from a pistol with a silencer, and then shot him twice more in the head of the fallen man.
The murder of a Georgian citizen in a Berlin park became known to the public on August 24, 2019. In 2002, Khangoshvili was put on the wanted list in Russia on suspicion of terrorism. In Germany, the victim lived under the name Tornike Kavtarashvili.
The next day, a 49-year-old Russian citizen was arrested on suspicion of involvement and was put on the federal wanted list in Russia in 2014 in a contract murder case.
On December 4, 2019, the German Foreign Ministry declared two employees of the Russian Embassy and two employees of the Russian special services persona non grata, as it considered that Moscow was not taking enough part in the investigation of the crime. In turn, the Russian Foreign Ministry declared two employees of the German embassy persona non grata.
In February 2020, the German federal prosecutor’s office re-arrested a murder suspect. In addition to accusations of shooting a man, the department charged the man with a crime related to illegal possession of weapons.