A murderer goes free: Germany blanches at grim moral calculus

By Thomas Escritt

BERLIN (Reuters) - Relatives of the man murdered by a Russian hitman in a Berlin park have voiced disappointment at the killer's release, reflecting unease in Germany at the moral equation that secured freedom for 16 political prisoners in Russian and Belarusian jails.

Georgian citizen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, an ethnic Chechen who had taken up arms against the Russian state in the early 1990s but since forsworn the armed Chechen independence struggle, was shot in 2019.

His killer Vadim Krasikov was one of seven Russian agents freed from Western jails on Thursday to secure the release of political prisoners in Russia including U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich and opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza.

"On one hand we are glad that lives have been saved," Khangoshvili's relatives said in a statement released by their lawyer. "But we are very disappointed that there are apparently no laws even in countries that put the rule of law on a pedestal."

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the decision had been difficult but necessary to save lives, a view echoed by his justice minister Marco Buschman.

"In cases of doubt, always choose for freedom," Buschmann said.

But that could not still disquiet many felt at a murderer walking free, a move that Germany had long resisted - as Joe Biden acknowledged.

"The demands required me to get some significant concessions from Germany, which they originally concluded they could not do because of the person in question. But everyone stepped up," he said.

Even releasing him required complex legal footwork: Buschmann had to order prosecutors to state that they no longer wished for Krasikov's sentence to be enforced - a highly unusual step in Germany's legal order.

Many warned that after springing his star agent, Russian President Vladimir Putin might be tempted to arrest further Westerners in order to bargain others out of jail.

"This exchange makes it clear to everyone that anyone can arbitrarily be turned into Putin's bargaining chip," Roderich Kiesewetter, a security specialist from the opposition conservatives, told the Tagesspiegel newspaper.

"We can't let Putin's murderers out every time, and we won't. Everyone should bear that in mind before travelling," he added.

(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Friederike Heine and Peter Graff)

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