"Vadim Nikolaevich K." - indicated in the column "defendant" on a piece of paper at the entrance to the specially protected area of hall number 700 of the Berlin Land court. The case of a Russian citizen accused of murdering former Chechen field commander Zelimkhan khangoshvili has been held here for two months. All participants and spectators of the trial are searched before entering the courtroom; journalists are forbidden to take with them not only electronic equipment, but even bundles of keys and wallets. You can only enter with a Notepad and a fountain pen.
While waiting for his turn, M. stares at this piece of paper for a long time. The German Prosecutor General's office is sure that "Vadim Nikolaevich K." came to Berlin via Paris from Moscow specifically to shoot the father of her children. During the trial on Tuesday, December 1, she and the accused will be separated by no more than ten meters - and armored glass.
Two wars as a personal tragedy
M. refuses to be interviewed, as do the lawyers representing the khangoshvili family. Her appearance in court will take almost two hours, but it will not be enough.
M. 47 years old, she was born in Georgia, lives in the Federal state of Brandenburg, by profession-a doctor, and her specialty in response to a question from the judge, she pronounces in German and almost without an accent.
"I was a purposeful student, I had big plans," says M. about her school years in Chechnya, where she studied until the eighth grade. The family then decided to send her to Estonia to be cared for by relatives. There she entered medical College, but did not finish her studies - her father bought a house in Chechnya, decided to gather the family in one place.
When the first war in Chechnya began in December 1993, she fled to Dagestan. "None of us then expected such a devastating war," says M. a few months Later, fleeing the fighting, her parents also left Chechnya. The family was reunited in the Dagestani city of Khasavyurt, the name of which the court interpreter, who speaks excellent Russian, could not pronounce correctly.
"We call it matchmaking"
M. remained in Dagestan and graduated from the medical Academy there in 1997. Her parents returned to Chechnya, where in the summer of 1996, during clashes between Russian troops and separatists, her parents ' house was hit by a shell - her sister and niece were killed. M. tells about all this calmly and regularly, but in the hall every now and then there is a tense silence.
At one point, one of the accused's lawyers can't stand the gaze of the victim's son, who came to the meeting with his mother, and asks the judge to restore order.
At the end of 1999, war broke out again in Chechnya, and M. fled again, only this time not to Dagestan, but to the Pankisi gorge in Georgia. There, in the spring of 2000, she was "brought together" with Zelimkhan khangoshvili. "We call it matchmaking," she says, and the translator tries to find an adequate equivalent in German.
"I didn't know about anything, I was called as a doctor to a patient - and Zelimkhan was there," she says. Her cousin participated in the organization of Dating.
Under the command of khangoshvili there were no more than 20 people
"I despised war, politics and violence," She says of herself in those years. But her husband was very different-he was, in her words, "a very strong patriot and warrior." In may 2001, he "went to war", and at some point it began to seem to her that they would not see each other again.
When asked by the judge about her ex-husband's ties to the separatist leader Maskhadov, she says that khangoshvili did not tell her much, claiming that he commanded a group of fighters numbering no more than 20 people. She describes herself as "an ostrich that tried to hide its head in the sand." According to her, even then, unable to withstand the load, she was thinking about divorce. But they divorced much later - in 2017, while already in Germany.
Khangoshvili participated in the attack on Nazran
The judge asks what M. knows about khangoshvili's involvement in the attack on Nazran in the summer of 2004 and refers to Vladimir Putin's press conference in Paris in December 2019, during which the Russian President publicly commented on the Berlin murder for the first time . According to Putin, more than 90 people were killed in just one of the attacks, which involved khangoshvili, who was shot in Berlin.
M. replies that Zelimkhan khangoshvili did participate in the RAID of militants in Nazran, but claims that there were half as many victims. According to her, in early 2005, they returned to Georgia, where a few months earlier, as a result of the so-called "rose revolution", then 37-year-old graduate of Columbia University in new York, Mikhail Saakashvili, came to power.
In response to the judge's question, M. confirms that khangoshvili received the title and status of "Emir of Pankisi" in Georgia, because "he agreed with the Saakashvili authorities that he was responsible for his people in the gorge". The connections of the slain field commander with the entourage of the former President of Georgia may still be the subject of court consideration - during the investigation, the wife of Mikhail Saakashvili, Sandra, was interviewed as a witness. In addition, it is known that khangoshvili moved to Ukraine at a time when Saakashvili served as Governor of the Odessa region.
The court did not have enough time to interview the victim's ex-wife, so her speech will continue in two weeks.
The accused Vadim K. (according to the Prosecutor's office), aka Vadim S. (as indicated in the passport found with him) still remains silent.
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