German federal prosecutors have demanded life in prison without parole for a Russian man accused of murdering a former Chechen commander in Berlin more than two years ago - allegedly on the orders of Moscow, writes rferl.org.

The request was made to a Berlin court on December 7 after 14 months of trial of the man identified by prosecutors as Vadim Krasikov, who is accused of shooting dead Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Georgian citizen of Chechen ethnicity, in Kleiner Tiergarten Park in August 2019.

The suspect, who was arrested minutes after the killing, has claimed his innocence. He had traveled to Germany on a Russian passport issued under the name of Vadim Sokolov.

Federal prosecutors identified him as a “commander of a special unit of the Russian secret services FSB”.