The widow of a Chechen man who was gunned down earlier this month in a Vienna suburb says
her husband was an informant for Austrian security agencies and that police were examining his cell phone, which she said had recordings and other possible evidence.
Zarema Umarova spoke to RFE/RL on July 24, a day after
relatives of her slain husband, Mamikhan Umarov, issued an unusual video appeal in which they claimed responsibility for his killing and appeared to absolve Chechnya's notorious strongman leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, of blame.
Umarova's comments add further details about the circumstances of the killing -- the latest in a series of attacks that have targeted Chechen refugees who fled Russia for various European countries.
The killings have spooked Chechnya's diaspora and renewed focus on Kadyrov, who has run the Russian region for more than a decade and been accused of human rights abuses and ordering hit squads to target expatriate Chechens.
Austrian police have arrested two Chechen asylum seekers as part of their investigation into the July 4 killing in the Vienna suburb of Gerasdorf. Austrian officials have said a political motive or a personal argument could be behind the killing.
Umarov, who went by the name Anzor as well as the alias Martin Beck,
was a former Chechen separatist and critic of Kadyrov. He settled in Austria in 2005 and received asylum two years later.
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