Is Krymshamkhalovs Murder a Political Assassination?
A 27-year-old Chechen was shot to death in Vienna, Austria on January 13. The victim was identified as Umar Israilov, and Agence France-Presse on January 14 quoted the Austrian newspaper Kurier as reporting that he was shot to death by two gunmen. AFP reported that Austrian police had arrested a suspect in the killing—a Chechen identified only as Otto K.—who denied involvement in the shooting but told authorities that Israilov had worked as part of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov’s security team and “deserved” to die for having abandoned the pro-Russian Chechen camp. According to the French news agency, a Russian source cited by Kurier said that Israilov had been close to Chechen warlord Movsar Barayev, one of the Chechen gunmen involved in the Dubrovka theater siege in Moscow in October 2002. New York Times correspondent C. J. Chivers wrote in the newspaper on January 14 that according to a family friend of Israilov, he was ambushed at lunchtime on January 13 near his Vienna apartmen
