Police in Vienna were today investigating whether Russia's secret service was involved in the murder of a prominent exiled critic of Chechnya's president, who was shot dead in the city on Tuesday.
Umar Israilov, 27, was shot dead in as he left a grocery shop outside his Vienna flat. He was a high-profile opponent of Chechnya's pro-Kremlin president, Ramzan Kadyrov, and had filed a complaint to the European court of human rights in 2006, alleging Kadyrov had tortured him.
Israilov, a former insurgent, was arrested in 2003. During his time in detention, Israilov claimed he was tortured with electric shocks, and said he witnessed fellow detainees being beaten and kicked by Kadyrov and others. After being released under amnesty, he worked briefly as Kadyrov's bodyguard, before fleeing to Austria.
According to Austrian police, in the days before his death Israilov complained he was being followed. On Tuesday two men ambushed him outside a supermarket at 1pm. Ismailov tried to escape – zigzagging across a crowded street, but stumbled as his pursuers fired four times. They caught up and shot him twice in the head, police said.
"Two men stormed up to him. One man had a pistol in his hand," a 45-year-old witness told the Kurier paper in Vienna. Another added: "We heard shots. The street was full of people. One customer fled into a doorway. The two killers were wearing military trousers."
Human rights activists today described Israilov's assassination as "shocking" and "disturbing". "We are deeply alarmed about what appears to be another politically motivated killing of a critic of high-level Russian government officials," said Oleg Orlov, the director of Moscow's Memorial Human Rights Centre.
He added: "In light of the brutal retaliation inflicted on those who speak out on abuses in Chechnya, Israilov's actions were particularly courageous, and his killers and those behind them need to be promptly held to account."
Although critics of Russian officials have been murdered in the past, it is relatively unusual for killings to take place in the European Union. "Sadly or ironically I think we are already getting used to the fact that critics of the president of the Chechen Republic get killed, both inside the territory of the Russia Federation and outside it," said Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch in Moscow.
Austrian police today confirmed that they had arrested one of the alleged killers, a fellow-Chechen, near the scene. The Kurier reported that the suspect, named as Otto K, told his interrogators that Israilov was a "traitor". He had "deserved" his execution, he reportedly added. Israilov had lived in Austria with his pregnant wife and their three children.
Kadyrov is a close ally of Russia's former president and current prime minister, Vladimir Putin. The Chechen leader has previously been accused of involvement in the killing of his enemies – a charge he denied. In 2006 he was linked to the murder of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead outside her Moscow apartment. "I don't kill women," Kadyrov said at the time.
Today human rights watch said that another Chechen critic of Kadryov's had gone missing and was presumed dead. Mokhmadsalakh Masaev vanished in Chechnya in August, a few weeks after giving an interview in which he described being repeatedly tortured in a secret prison in Kadyrov's home village. The torture went on for four months, he said.
Some 20,000 Chechens are estimated to be living in Austria – both legally and illegally. The country is a haven for many who have fled the Kremlin's two wars in the republic, as well as for Chechen separatists who have refused to support Kadryov's pro-Moscow regime. Kadyrov – whose father was Chechnya's president until he was blown up and killed in 2004 – has been president since 2007.
Torture in Chechnya is still depressingly commonplace, activists said today. "We find Israilov's torture allegations entirely credible," said Rachel Denber, director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division. "Torture is a long-standing problem in Chechnya that the Russian authorities have failed to stop, even in the face of credible evidence from victims like Umar Israilov."