Austrian police have they arrested two Chechen Russians for the fatal shooting of a Chechen dissident.
A 43-year-old man was found dead Saturday with gunshot wounds in Gerasdorf, near Vienna. Police arrested a 47-year-old man in Linz, 200 kilometers from the capital. A 37-year-old second Russian, also from Chechnya and living in Austria, was detained on Sunday for investigations into the murder of his fellow Russian.
Police said in a statement: “The motives for the crime are unclear.”
A spokesman for the prosecution identified the dead man as Martin B, a critic of the Chechen government. They said prosecutors were seeking a court order to keep the suspect in custody.
Police said the victim was an asylum seeker. The suspect lives in Austria and is from the Chechnya region.
The Ukrainian Interior Ministry told AFP that the man had provided evidence in a murder case in Ukraine in 2017. The case concerned the murder of the wife of a man who had planned to assassinate Vladimir Putin.
The shooting in Vienna comes amid growing concern for the safety of Chechen dissidents living in exile. In February, an exiled Chechen blogger criticizing Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov rejected an attacker armed with a hammer.
A month earlier, Chechen opposition leader Imran Aliev was found dead in a hotel room in the northern French city of Lille after being stabbed 135 times.
Chechnya is a predominantly Muslim Russian republic in the North Caucasus. Two wars in the 1990s triggered a wave of emigration, and many Chechens headed to Western Europe.
More Chechens have fled into exile in recent years due to disagreements with the pro-Kremlin Kadyrov, whom human rights activists accuse of repeated rights violations.
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