Warsaw, Oct 22. (dpa/GNA) – A second suspect has been arrested more than four months after a Russian opposition artist was shot dead in Poland, Tomasz Siemoniak, the country’s minister for coordinating intelligence services, wrote on X on Thursday.
The 22-year-old Georgian citizen is suspected of being an accomplice to the murder, and has been held in pre-trial detention for an initial three months, Siemoniak wrote.
In mid-June, Semyon Skrepetsky, a Russian performance artist and cartoonist who used the pseudonym, was shot five times on a street in the small eastern Polish town of Biała Podlaska.
According to investigators, the attack resembled an execution. The gunman approached the victim and fired two shots from a pistol. When Skrepetsky fell to the ground, the man walked up to him and fired three more shots at close range.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, said at the time that much pointed to a political murder, even though more evidence was still needed.
Police arrested the suspected gunman shortly after the attack. Officials said he is a 36-year-old man with a Georgian passport. He has been held in pre-trial detention since.
Suspected accomplice organized murder weaponA court spokeswoman told the Polish news agency PAP that the arrested 22-year-old is suspected of providing the gunman with the murder weapon, a vehicle and a mobile phone with an app for tracking the victim’s movements.
The suspect is also said to have supplied information about Skrepetsky’s whereabouts.
GNA