The police find a dead person in front of the Russian embassy in Berlin. The circumstances remain unknown – and uncommented.
Berlin – On the morning of October 19, 2021, police officers found the lifeless body of a man on the sidewalk in front of a building of the Russian embassy in Berlin-Mitte, as reported by Spiegel on Friday (November 5, 2021). The man had apparently fallen from an upper floor of the embassy complex. The resuscitation attempts by rescue workers who had been called were unsuccessful.
As a spokesman for the Foreign Office confirmed in Berlin, the case is known there. But he did not want to comment on the matter “for reasons of privacy protection”. According to Der Spiegel, the 35-year-old was accredited as the second embassy secretary in Berlin since the summer of 2019, according to an official list of diplomats. According to information from the magazine, the man is said to have had connections with the Russian Domestic Intelligence Service (FSB). He is also said to have been related to a senior FSB officer.
Death in the Russian embassy in Berlin – connection to zoo murder?
His department in Russia is responsible, among other things, for the fight against terrorism and is linked by Western intelligence services to the so-called Tiergarten Murder, in which a Georgian exile was shot in Berlin in the summer of 2019. Investigative reporters from the platform The Insider write of the department that it “dealt with extrajudicial executions of activists and journalists in Russia”.
According to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, the act in the zoo was carried out on behalf of Russian government agencies. The case puts a heavy strain on relations between Germany and Russia. The victim had fought against Russia in the Chechnya war and, according to the indictment, was considered an enemy of the state there.
For a year now, the Superior Court in Berlin has been trying to clear up the background to the murder. The accused is a Russian who was caught shortly after the crime and is in custody. The 56-year-old is said to have entered Germany with an alias shortly beforehand. The defendant has so far not commented on the allegations at the trial.
Diplomat dies in Berlin: Russian opposition activist suspects outside interference
On the death of the Russian diplomat, the Russian opposition activist Leonid Volkov, who himself has been to the embassy several times, wrote in the news channel Telegram: The “windows of the building” are not high enough for a “suicide”. He said that the FSB officer’s son had been “thrown out of the window”.
This is about something “pretty serious”. Volkov is a close confidante of the imprisoned Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny. Volkov and Navalny accuse the FSB of political assassinations. Navalny also blames the FSB for the assassination attempt on himself last year with the neurotoxin Novichok.
Russian Embassy Berlin: “Tragic accident” is not commented on any further
In the current case, according to a report by Der Spiegel, the Russian embassy should not have consented to an autopsy of the diplomat’s body. From security circles it is said that the circumstances of the alleged fall and the cause of death are “unknown”. Since the deceased had diplomatic status, the public prosecutor was also unable to initiate a death investigation.
It was also unclear whether there were indications of third-party negligence. The diplomat’s body has since been brought to Russia. At the request of the magazine, the Russian embassy spoke of a “tragic accident” that was not commented on for “ethical reasons”. (na / dpa / afp)
