An anti-Putin blogger had his throat cut in a French hotel, and the killing has the hallmarks of the Russian hit squad causing chaos in Europe

https://www.businessinsider.com/anti-putin-blogger-imran-aliev-murdered-in-france-2020-2

Mitch Prothero
Feb 6, 2020, 8:28 AM

French police believe that the killing of a blogger from the disputed Russian region of Chechnya in a French hotel room last week was "politically motivated," a French police official briefed on the case said.

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Aliev had left Belgium, "where he was under police protection because of threats out of Russia and Chechnya over his opposition blogging," said the senior French police official, who could not be identified in the media because they were discussing an open investigation.

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European intelligence and law-enforcement officials remain extremely concerned about assassinations of anti-Putin and Kadyrov dissidents throughout the European Union and the UK. At least 15 people have been killed by Russian hit squads in the UK, including innocent bystanders.

These concerns have become more acute since the attempted assassination in 2018 of Sergei and Yulia Skripal with a nerve agent in Salisbury, England, as well as the daylight assassination of a Chechen dissident in a crowded Berlin park last year.

The suspects in both cases have been linked to Russian intelligence services, as well as an attempted 2016 coup in Montenegro and the attempted assassination of a Bulgarian arms dealer, through photo identification and public access to various Russian government databases.

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