Status: 11/23/2021 6:00 p.m.
In October, a diplomat was found dead next to the Russian embassy in Berlin. According to the Berlin authorities, the man should not have rushed out of the embassy building.
By Florian Flade, WDR
The police are said to have attempted resuscitation when they spotted the man on the sidewalk in Behrenstrasse in Berlin-Mitte in the early morning of October 19, not far from the Russian embassy. But the first aid measures came too late and the man died. However, the Berlin police are not allowed to clarify the exact circumstances of his death. Because the dead man was a diplomat, accredited as “Second Embassy Secretary” in the Russian Embassy.
According to research by WDR and “Süddeutscher Zeitung”, the German security authorities assume that the 35-year-old man, who has been working in Berlin since 2019, did not fall to his death out of a window in the Russian embassy, as media reports initially said. Rather, the Russian diplomat is said to have fallen from the building opposite where his apartment was located.
Accident or Suicide?
A note from the Berlin authorities should show that there is no evidence of third-party debt. Instead, there are statements that the diplomat went to the window that morning and apparently jumped.
After the incident became known, the Russian Embassy stated that it was a “tragic accident” and that any speculation about the background is considered to be “wrong”. The embassy is said to have not consented to an autopsy of the body; due to its diplomatic status, the Berlin police are not allowed to process the case further. The dead has already been transferred to Russia.
The case, however, concerns German security authorities, because the diplomat is said to have worked for a Russian secret service according to the intelligence of the intelligence agency’s counter-espionage. What exactly he did in Germany, however, is still unclear.
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