MOSCOW. Dec 5 (Interfax) - Georgian citizen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, who was gunned down in Berlin in August 2019, has been implicated in plotting and involvement in a number of terror attacks in Russia as a ringleader of militant gangs, and Georgia declared him internationally wanted in 2016, a source with Russian law enforcement agencies told Interfax.
"Georgia declared Khangoshvili internationally wanted in 2016," the source told Interfax on Wednesday.
Khangoshvili has served as a link between warlords of illegal militant groups Aslan Maskhadov, Shamil Basayev, Doku Umarov, Khalilov, and Taziyev who have operated in the North Caucasus, he said. He also had close connections with foreign mercenaries Abu Khavs, Khattab, and Abu al-Walid.
On Basayev's orders Khangoshvili led a militant gang, "which was set up to plot and perpetrate subversive and terror attacks in Ingushetia in 2003-2004," the source said.
Khangoshvili took part in a number of attacks on the Russian Federal Armed Forces' convoys on the road between the populated localities of Alkhasty and Galashki in the Sunzha district in the Russian internal republic of Ingushetia in May and August 2003, the source said.
"Fifteen servicemen were killed then," he said.
According to the same source, on June 21-22, 2004, "Under the supervision of international terrorist Basayev Khangoshvili participated in an attack on representatives of the bodies of state power and governance in Ingushetia." "These attacks killed 98 people, including 67 law enforcement officers, and 104 were injured," the source said.
Khangoshvili is involved in the murders of law enforcement officers, the source said. In particular, "on April 22, 2004, he personally shot down warrant officer of the Ingush branch of the Federal Security Service Gadaborshev."
The republican prosecutor's office launched a criminal inquiry into the attack on Ingushetia under Articles 205, 105, 317 and Part 3 Article 222 of the Russian Criminal Code, the source said.
The Investigative Directorate of the Russian Investigative Committee for the North Caucasian Federal District is investigating this criminal case, he said.
As part of this criminal case, Khangoshvili is identified as a ringleader of militant gangs, which have been formed on Basayev's orders.
The law enforcement agencies of Georgia, Ukraine, the United States, and Germany were informed of Khangoshvili's crimes as a member of illegal militant groups in Russia, the source said.
Zelimkhan Sultanovich Khangoshvili was born on August 15, 1979. He is a native of the village of Duisi, Akhmeta Region of the former Georgian Soviet Republic. He is a Georgian citizen. He was registered at 17, Kandelaki Street in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.
Georgian citizen Khangoshvili was killed in the Kleiner Tiergarten neighborhood in central Berlin around noon on August 23 while on his way to a mosque. The perpetrator, who arrived at the scene by bicycle, fired twice at Khangoshvili, killing him instantly.
A Russian citizen was detained as a suspect in this murder.
The German prosecution authorities suspect that the killer might have acted on orders from either the Russian federal government or the Chechen authorities.