3.3.22
A Russian national has been charged with planning the murder of a Chechen dissident living in Germany. The order for the murder is thought to have come from someone close to Chechnya's dictator, Ramzan Kadyrov. German federal prosecutors on Thursday announced that they had laid charges against a Russian man of Chechen origin for planning the murder of an exiled Chechen dissident at the behest of the Chechen security apparatus. The man, identified only as Valid D. under German privacy laws, is accused of having been commissioned "with the logistical organization" of the murder, which included procuring a weapon with ammunition and silencer and spying on the intended victim. He was arrested on January 1, 2021, preventing the attack from being carried out. The prosecutors said the intended victim and his brother were known as critics of the regime of Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic, which has often been accused of a range of human rights abuses by rights groups. "The state-ordered killing was, in particular, meant to silence the brother of the intended victim," they said, in remarks carried by the AFP news agency.
