Alleged plot against Chechen dissident’s brother uncovered in Germany

The details of the plot against Mohmad Abdurakhmanov were revealed by the alleged would-be assassin himself. Mohmad’s brother, Chechen dissident Tumso Abdurakhmanov, has pointed to Head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov’s cousin as the mastermind behind the plot. 

An accomplice to the alleged assassination plot, Valid Dadakayev, has been arrested by German police. The German federal prosecutor’s office is currently investigating the case.

Mohmad Abdurakhmanov, the target of the alleged plot, is a native of Chechnya and resident of Germany. He is the brother of Tumso Abdurakhmanov, a well-known blogger with 330,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel. Tumso survived an attempted murder in February 2020 in Sweden, where he has political asylum.

Tumso has said the assassination plot against his brother was a response to the failed attempt on his life the previous year. ‘He [Ramzan Kadyrov] decided to take the path of least resistance’, he said in a video uploaded to YouTube on 8 March. ‘He could not kill me, so he decided to kill my brother.’ 

In March 2019, a year before Tumso’s attempted murder, the speaker of the Chechen parliament declared a blood feud against the blogger for insulting the memory of Akhmat Kadyrov, the father of Ramzan Kadyrov.

[Read on OC Media: Chechen blogger survives ‘assassination attempt’ in Europe]

The plot 

According to Tumso Abdurakhmanov, Pakhrudi Edelgeriyev — the alleged mastermind of the plot and cousin to Ramzan Kadyrov — hired a Chechen resident Tamerlan Aurbiyev to kill his brother. 

Aurbiyev was detained by Lithuanian border guards while trying to illegally cross the Belarusian-Lithuanian border, where he was to meet Valid Dadakayev, a resident of Germany. Abdurakhmanov said that Dadakayev was by Lithuanian police as an accomplice to an illegal border crossing. 

During his arrest, Aurbiyev asked for political asylum in Lithuania and was sent to a refugee camp, while Dadakayev, according to Tumso Abdurakhmanov, got off with a large fine.

From the Lithuanian refugee camp, Abdurakhmanov said, Aurbiyev left for Germany, where Dadakayev instructed him on the details of organising the murder of Mohmad Abdurakhmanov.

Aurbiyev then apparently decided against going through with the plot and got in touch with Tumso Abdurakhmanov, informing the blogger about the impending murder attempt on his brother. He also requested asylum from the German authorities. 

German police proceeded to arrest Valid Dadakayev as an accomplice to the plot and took Aurbiyev and his brother Mohmad under their protection.

As of yet, OC Media has not been able to reach the press service of the German federal prosecutor’s office for comment on the case.

A string of killings

The alleged plot is only the latest in a string of attacks on Chechens living abroad in general, and in Germany in particular.

In one recent case, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was shot dead in the German capital in 2019. German Prosecutor General Ronald Georg said that the Russian authorities were behind the killing.

More recently, in the summer of 2020, blogger Mamikhan Umarov, known for his criticism of Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot dead near the Austrian capital. Local authorities identified former residents of Chechnya as the alleged killers.