An undated picture obtained by Reuters shows Russian hitman Vadim Krasikov who was sentenced to life in 2021 for the assassination of a Chechen-Georgian dissident in a Berlin park, in Berlin, Germany, August 1, 2024. Picture obtained by REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES
BERLIN (Reuters) - Vadim Krasikov, a Russian freed from jail in Germany on Friday in a prisoner swap between Moscow and the West, was convicted of the murder in 2019 of a former Chechen militant as he walked in broad daylight in a park in central Berlin.
The brazenness of the murder, committed a few minutes' walk from parliament and the office of then-chancellor Angela Merkel, sparked outrage in Germany that has complicated attempts to swap him for the growing list of political prisoners the West would like freed from Russian jails.
The judge called the killing of Georgian citizen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili "state terrorism", adding that the order had almost certainly come from Putin himself.
Among the evidence he cited for Russian state involvement were his official Russian papers containing a false identity and the fact that Russian law empowered Putin to order the murder of state enemies abroad.
The three shots fired from a Glock pistol on a sunny August day were deemed murder "with especially serious aggravating circumstances" - the most serious conviction possible under German law.
Particularly aggravating was the fact that Khangoshvili had long forsworn any violent struggle for Chechen independence, the judge said.
"This was not an act of self-defence by Russia. This was and is nothing other than state terrorism," he said. "Four children lost their father, two siblings their brother."
Krasikov was born in Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union, in 1965, and police mugshots show him with deep, narrow-set eyes and a mournful expression. He worked for Russia's FSB state security service, where, according to open source investigators Bellingcat, he became a specialist assassin.
Krasikov's conviction in December 2021 triggered the expulsion of two of the 101 diplomats then serving in Russia's giant Berlin embassy. Their number has been reduced by another 50 since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
He entered Germany via France with false papers under the name Vadim Sokolov. He was arrested minutes after cycling up behind Khangoshvili and shooting him dead; passers-by spotted him changing his clothes, shaving off his beard and dumping his bicycle in a pond, and alerted police.
While Krasikov pleaded innocent and maintained he was genuinely Sokolov, a St Petersburg construction engineer visiting Berlin as a tourist, Putin has implicitly acknowledged his identity and profession. Last year, without naming Krasikov, he spoke of his desire to secure the release of someone who had "eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals".
Investigators identified Krasikov with the help of Ukraine's security services, who spotted footage of a man with identical tattoos - seemingly of a demon wearing a crown and a snake - at his second marriage, to a woman from the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv in 2010.
Throughout his trial, he made a show of not recognising the court, often removing the headset relaying the interpretation when witnesses against him were heard.
For Germany, releasing him is legally complex, especially given the seriousness of the crime.
Specialists have suggested that he could be released under a theoretical agreement that he serve his sentence in Russia, even if the Kremlin then chose to renege on this. Alternatively, prosecutors could state that they no longer wish to see his sentence enforced.
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
