Russian Tourists Aren't Coming but Hitmen Are

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(HaberTürk Newspaper, 13 April 2016)


New Russian tourists. Hey, they rent cars and hotels, too.

The two Russian hitmen who shot Chechen commander Vahid
Edelgiriev in Istanbul on 1 November 2015 and then gouged out
his eyes with a dagger were captured in Istanbul on 8 April.  The
operation mounted by the TNIO's (Turkish National Intelligence
Organization) regional directorate and Istanbul police went off just
like an action film.

As Russian agents Iurii Anisimov (52) and Aleksandr Smirnov (55)
were scouting for a new operation they were caught red-handed. The
two refused to talk during the ensuing interrogation and were jailed
by the court.


The late, great Chechen commander Vahid Edelgiriev.

The Russians had false Interpol ID cards, a large number of photos
of Russian officials (!), a USB memory card and PIN/PUK information
loaded on their 5 telephones, along with US dollars with consecutive
serial numbers.

The initial results from information recovered from the USB card
showed that the two Russian hitmen had scouted a number of sites
in European countries. There were pictures of car parks, license
plates, security cameras, hotel rooms and out-of-the-way areas of
the hotel rooms.

The Russian agents spent an entire day in a European country
monitoring the movements of a particular security camera, taking
photos of the camera's position each hour. Efforts to recover more
from the USB and to reclaim erased data are continuing.


When tradecraft gets rusty...especially during repeat performance.