page_title: Zelimkhan Khangoshvili
section_title: Identifying Khangoshvili's assassin
hierarchical_section_title: Zelimkhan Khangoshvili / Identifying Khangoshvili's assassin
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Глава Чеченской Республики Рамзан Кадыров и директор телерадиокомпании "Грозный" Адлан Бачаев. Финал конкурса "Национальная пятерка"
context_page_description: Zelimkhan "Tornike" Khangoshvili was an ethnic Chechen Georgian who was a former military commander for the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria during the Second Chechen War, and a Georgian military officer during the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. Later on, he allegedly turned into a useful source of information for Georgian intelligence by identifying Russian spies and jihadists operating on domestic and foreign soil through a connection with Georgian intelligence agents. Khangoshvili continued to be considered a terrorist by Russian security service, the FSB and wanted in Russia.
  On 23 August 2019, Khangoshvili was assassinated in a Berlin park, by an alleged Russian GRU operative. Chechen Republic leader Ramzan Kadyrov is suspected of ordering the assassination of Khangoshvili.
context_section_description: Khangoshvili's alleged assassin, detained by German police, traveled on a valid Russian passport issued under the fake identity of Vadim Sokolov. Reporting by Der Spiegel and other media has disclosed that the suspect initially traveled from Moscow to Paris and then on to Warsaw, where he rented a hotel room for five days during which he traveled on to Berlin. In a report from 26 September 2019, The New York Times reported that German investigators had received a tip from an anonymous source claiming the suspect's real identity was that of Vladimir Stepanov, a former police officer from Saint Petersburg who in 2006 was convicted and sentenced to 24 years in jail.
  German police are said to be undetermined whether Vladimir Stepanov is in fact the person behind the Vadim Sokolov persona. The open source investigative team at Bellingcat and its investigative partners Der Spiegel, The Insider and the Dossier Centre, have concluded however that the suspect held by German police is unlikely to be Vladimir Stepanov. The same finding was reached independently by the St. Petersburg-based online newspaper Fontanka.ru, that claimed in a 26 September 2019 report that Vladimir Stepanov remains in a Russian prison. Bellingcat and its partners have stated that conclusive evidence proves that the suspect traveled to Berlin under a cover identity with the active support of the Russian state and that the Russian state "created a comprehensive, back-dated paper-trail for this fictitious persona in order to help him obtain the necessary travel and insurance documents, and crucially, a Schengen visa."
  "Sokolov's passport was issued without any biometric data, the inclusion of which has been the default option for all Russian passports since 2009, except 'in emergency situations when the applicant has no time to wait for the fingerprint encryption and printing process.' In fact, 20 GRU operatives outed by Bellingcat in recent years, including those suspected of poisoning Skripal, have used these 'old-style' passports in ultimately futile attempts to hide their cover identities."
  On 4 Deсember 2019, German Public Prosecutor General took over the case, arguing that "there are sufficient real indications that the killing was either commissioned by state agencies of the Russian Federation or such agencies of the Autonomous Chechen Republic as part of the Russian Federation."
  On 6 December 2019, German media outlets reported that the German Federal Intelligence Service had received information that a Russian state agency plans to kill "Vadim Sokolov" in German prison to get rid of the witness. Perceiving it as credible, the German authorities transferred Stepanov to an unknown prison in Germany.
caption: Some observers alleged that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov (right) was behind the assassination of Khangoshvili.[4]
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