When Umar Israilov left the Eurospar supermarket on Leopoldauerstrasse in Vienna at around noon on Jan. 13, 2009, he must have realized immediately that his life was at stake. He immediately wound up and hurled a full shopping bag into the face of a man who was lying in wait for him outside.
But just a few seconds later, and a few meters further, it was all over. Two men with drawn pistols pursued him and then fired on Israilov as he tried to run away. After being hit several times, he collapsed, but the two men continued firing their guns. One man even beat him with the butt of his pistol.
Israilov, a 27-year-old Russian citizen of Chechen origin and an applicant for asylum in Austria, died on the way to the hospital.
The murder, committed in broad daylight, triggered a wave of outrage and attracted international attention. And now it could very well harm Europe's relationship with Russia.
More than one-and-a-half years after the murder, the Vienna Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism has reached the end of its investigation. It believes that an ally of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, was behind the killing. In their dossier, the investigators identify "Kadyrov, Ramzan" as one of the "instigators," and the investigators conclude that Kadyrov knew about and accepted the killing. Indeed, it would appear that a man who owes his position of power to Moscow's support may have ordered a contract killing in the middle of Europe.
'Serious Human Rights Violation'
The investigators cast a wide net. In addition to solving the actual crime, they included a complaint filed against Kadyrov by the Society for Threatened Peoples, as well as torture allegations Israilov had made against Kadyrov before the European Court of Human Rights. Legal experts like Manfred Nowak, the director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights in Vienna, are calling for consequences. It is "time to issue an international arrest warrent" against Kadyrov, says Nowak. "We have enough evidence of Kadyrov's direct involvement in serious human rights violations, including torture".
There are precedents for such far-reaching investigations. When three people died in the 1986 bombing of the La Belle nightclub in Berlin, investigators speculated that the Libyan government was behind the attack. Libya, though, was isolated in the international community. Russia, on the other hand, is a major power and a partner of the European Council.
Will the Austrian government pick a fight with Moscow? Prosecutors in Vienna, working in coordination with the justice ministry, are now reviewing the investigators' report. Although the institution of legal proceedings against Kadyrov would be mostly symbolic, it would represent a "form of atonement" for the "dramatic failure of the authorities," says Florian Klenk of the Vienna-based magazine Falter.
The tragic account of the murder is described in a report that is hundreds of pages long. "Not enough was done to protect Israilov," says his attorney, Nadja Lorenz. On the other hand, it wasn't easy for the authorities to find their bearings in the Chechen expatriate community. About 20,000 Chechen refugees live in Austria, including members of the political resistance against President Kadyrov, committed democrats and dangerous Islamists. It is a microcosm of the chaos in their native Chechnya.
