BERLIN: German police were investigating on Sunday the assassination-style killing in a Berlin park of a Georgian former special forces commando and Chechnya war veteran. Police have arrested a 49-year-old suspect from Russia’s Chechnya republic over the shooting on Friday in the Kleiner Tiergarten park. The victim was identified as Zelimkhan Khangoshvili by Georgia’s Human Rights Education and Monitoring Center (EMC), and was aged 40, according to German prosecutors.
The killer approached Khangoshvili from behind as he was on his way to a mosque, shot him twice and fled by bicycle in what one witness described as an “execution” style killing. Police divers later recovered a Glock handgun, a wig and bicycle from the nearby Spree river. A large sum of money was found in the home of the suspect, according to Tagesspiegel daily. The victim was reportedly a veteran of the second Chechen War from 1999 to 2009, where he served as a field commander from 2001 to 2005, and later joined a Georgian counter-terrorist unit. — AFP
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
