Tiergarten Murder Trial: Execution with Political Motive?

After more than a year of negotiations, the verdict is pending in the zoo murder trial. The prosecution sees the Russian state behind the crime, the defense believes this has not been proven.

The murder in the Kleiner Tiergarten in Berlin-Moabit was almost two and a half years ago. On August 23, 2019 around noon, the Chechen-born Georgian Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was shot with three bullets from behind in the midst of numerous passers-by.

Who is behind the crime has been negotiated in the past 14 months before the 2nd criminal senate of the Berlin Higher Regional Court. Now the verdict is imminent after the prosecution and defense have held their pleading. A Russian citizen is charged. The Federal Prosecutor accuses him of acting on behalf of government agencies in Russia.

“Extrajudicial Execution”

After 53 days of trial, the prosecution regards this allegation and thus a political motive as proven. She demands life imprisonment for murder and the determination of the particular gravity of the guilt.

Associate prosecutor Johanna Künne spoke of an “extrajudicial execution to demonstrate political power”. As a representative of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, Public Prosecutor Nikolaus Forschner accused the Russian leadership of “radically disregarding the rule of law”. The sovereignty and the monopoly of force in the Federal Republic were called into question by the act on German soil.

The man killed was a fighter in the Second Chechen War. According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Khangoshvili was a “strategic high-value target”. Russian President Vladimir Putin called him a “bandit” and a “terrorist”. By justifying the act, Putin practically admitted it, Künne quoted the assessment of diplomats. Defense attorney Robert Unger called this a political statement that was without evidential value for the judgment.

Insidious Murder?

His client insisted that he had nothing to do with the crime. He had been in Berlin as a tourist and, to his surprise, was arrested while peeing behind a bush on the Holsteiner Ufer.

However, two witnesses had observed the suspect as he had previously changed behind bushes on the banks of the Spree and thrown objects, including a bicycle, into the water. This was only a few hundred meters away from the crime scene in the Kleiner Tiergarten.

There, according to an expert, the perpetrator shot the victim twice in the back. When the man lay motionless on the ground, he “shot him to death,” according to the prosecution. She sees the homicidal trait of the treachery as proven because the perpetrator approached the unsuspecting victim from behind. Defense attorney Unger contradicted, however: No witness had described what happened before the shooting. All of them only became aware of the victims and perpetrators after the first bang.

Difficult witnesses

Unger also questioned the second murder trait brought up by the prosecution. These are low motives for the act, specifically the political motive. According to Unger, the evidence presented is based primarily on two questionable witnesses and material from the Ukrainian authorities, the authenticity of which has not been proven.

These are documents and photos of the parents-in-law of Vadim Krasikov – the real name of the accused according to the prosecution. His brother-in-law by marriage from the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv testified in court – but twice because he did not feel safe the first time.

The second witness, cast by Unger in doubt, is an employee of the research platform Bellingcat. This witness G. presented evidence from his research on four days of the trial. They were supposed to prove that the defendant’s name was Krasikov and that he committed the crime with a cover identity under the name of Vadim Sokolov.

This evidence was only useful for journalistic reporting and not as evidence, especially in a trial involving life imprisonment. Bellingcat and its cooperation partner “The Insider” from Russia lived from a financing model that was based on as many spectacular reports as possible, according to Unger.

In addition, G. declared his opposition to Putin and the Russian domestic secret service FSB on Twitter. It is not certain whether he would have published exculpatory material for the accused. Since he did not want to name his sources for their protection, they did not have strong evidential value.

Specific client unknown

Defense attorney Unger does not see enough evidence that his client is an FSB officer with the rank of Colonel, as claimed by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. He complained that, despite the lengthy investigation, there was no evidence of a specific order and a client. This does not prove the political motive. He therefore pleaded for manslaughter in the event that the court considers the culprit of the accused to be proven.

However, according to the conviction of the prosecution, German investigators presented sufficient evidence and circumstantial evidence that independently prove the identity of Krasikov and the bogus identity of Sokolov or support the findings of G.’s investigators. The fact that their findings played such a major role in the first place is due to the lack of cooperation between the Russian authorities, according to lawyer Künne. Russia, as a member of the Council of Europe, is obliged to do so. Because of this lack of cooperation, the German government had already expelled two Russian diplomats.

Historical dimension

If the court follows the indictment, it will be a trial of historic dimensions – this is the assessment of the intelligence service expert Andrei Soldatov: Since the 1950s, there has been no Russian agent in the West for a “wet business” – a paraphrase for a murder – stood before the court. It is also historical that little has changed since then, he said tagesschau.de.

If the court does not see any political motive, the Russian state remains politically responsible. It did not prevent actors from its ranks from being able to plan an act on German soil professionally on a long-term basis – in such a way that, despite extensive investigations, many questions remain unanswered – for example, about complicity.