A German court has sentenced Russian Vadim Krasikov (also known as Vadim Sokolov and the Bicycle Assassin) to life in prison for the murder of Chechen field commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, T-Online reports.
Earlier, the German prosecutor's office had demanded a life sentence. At the trial, federal prosecutor Nikolaus Forschner said that by killing Khangoshvili, Krasikov acted on a state contract. Khangoshvili, who was a combat field commander during the second Chechen war, was shot and killed in Berlin's Little Tiergarten Park on August 23, 2019.
He was granted asylum in Germany after a series of assassination attempts in Georgia and then Ukraine. Putin accused Khangoshvili of organizing terrorist attacks, though he did not explain which ones. Russia did not demand Khangoshvili's extradition from Germany and did not provide any documents on his connections with terrorists; there is no data about him in open sources either, only that he took part in the Chechen war.
The Insider, Bellingcat and Der Spiegel managed to identify Khangoshvili's assassin as Vadim Krasikov of the FSB special unit Vympel, also guilty of at least two contract murders of businessmen in Russia. Krasikov, who came to Germany with a passport in the name of Vadim S., was arrested on August 24, 2019 - the day after the murder.