Austria: Investigators link Chechen leader to Vienna murder

Austria: Investigators link Chechen leader to Vienna murder

The New York Times has a detailed article on this story. 


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Austrian investigators believe that Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov ordered the kidnapping of an exile in Vienna that went awry last year and ended in the man's killing, the Vienna prosecutors' office said on Tuesday.


A spokesman for the prosecutors, Gerhard Jarosch, said a report on the findings of a year-long criminal investigation by Austria's police and domestic intelligence agency came to this conclusion based mostly on circumstantial evidence.


Kadyrov's spokesman denied the president's involvement and dismissed the Austrian allegations as unfounded.


Chechen exile Umar Israilov was shot dead on the street in January last year after shopping for groceries in a working class district of Vienna. Three suspects held in connection with the killing may be indicted in the coming weeks, Jarosch said.


Evidence including from witnesses to the shooting suggested the murder was not planned as such but that it was a kidnapping that went wrong, Jarosch said.


"The (agency's) report says, verbatim: 'It has to be assumed that the kidnapping was indeed ordered from the highest level -- in brackets Kadyrov'," Jarosch said.


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Source: Reuters (English)

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