Former police officer Mamikhan Umarov was granted political asylum in Austria in 2005. There he ran a blog criticizing Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, and he also collaborated with Austrian intelligence.
On July 4 last year, the 43-year-old was found shot and killed outside Vienna. Police arrested a 48-year-old Chechen man who had the victim’s blood on one shoe and gunpowder sludge on one hand.
The man, who has not been identified, denied criminal guilt during the trial, but on Friday the verdict was handed down to life imprisonment.
The motive for the murder has not been determined, but according to the prosecutor in the case, it was either a political assassination or a settlement as a result of an argument over an arms deal.
Umarov had previously testified in several murder cases in which Chechens were involved in Austria.
In January, two Russians – a man and a woman – were sentenced to ten and eight years in prison respectively in connection with the attempted murder on a Chechen video blogger in Sweden. He too was a well-known critic of Kadyrov’s regime.
The Russian Republic of Chechnya declared independence in the early 1990s, triggering war between separatists and Russian forces in 1994.
The separatists were overthrown, and Chechnya has been led by Kadyrov since 2007. He stands for an Islamist policy, but is loyal to Russia.
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