Hunted by Russia for 20 years:

4 September 1999: They found him in a forest outside the city. The grass, 34-year-old Mikhail, was red, but the man had stopped bleeding from cuts to his head and upper body.

When they called him he did not have to. When they hit him, he didn’t respond. But when the students of the Military School listened to him, he breathed.

In a hospital in the town of Tula, Mikhail took his last breath two days later. Then the police sounded a death alarm.

Meanwhile, 27-year-old Alexander packed his things and left the city, his home and his wife. go north. to Norway.

Here Alexander began a new life. A new name, a new job and – eventually – a new family.

20 years later, police stop him at a random traffic control center in Klofta, and he gets past him.

Dagbladet concealed his identity and gave pseudonyms to three people in this article: murder victim Mikhail, neighbor and witness Sergei and convicted murderer Alexander. Dagbladet knows their identities.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia followed the “Wild Nineties”.

Unemployment and crime rates have risen, wages and life expectancy have fallen. Hardly anyone survived.

Even Russian President Vladimir Putin had to drive a pirated taxi to speculate on income.

In 1999, Alexander worked in the management of a large company in Tula. The city is home to half a million people, is located 185 kilometers south of Moscow and is famous as the birthplace and burial place of author Lev Tolstoy.

“These were tough times for both companies and companies. Instead of money, we worked on different goods. I sold everything to give employees a cash salary,” Alexander later explained.

Rumor has it that he was a successful businessman with a lot of money.

Then he got unwanted attention.

3 September 1999: Alexander agreed to the meeting, and was in an apartment in Tula. Here it is said that he met Mikhail and another person.

Mikhail is said to have told Alexander: “Every respectable businessman needs a roof.”

Mikhail is said to have asked for $1,000 a month in protection money. It is said that Alexander refused.

I was never a businessman and didn’t need protection. I tried to convey that to him, but he didn’t want to hear,” he later explained.

Then Mikhail and the other person must have locked Alexander in a room.

August 21, 2019: Several police patrols conducted routine traffic checks in Klofta, outside Oslo, today.

In one of the cars they stopped, then 47-year-old Alexander sat.

For 20 years he lived illegally in Norway and used at least four different names.

Here he got a job. Here he acquired ownership stakes in at least one construction company. Here he had a girlfriend and children.

For twenty years, Alexander was also accused of the murder of Michael.

He told the police who stopped him that he was from Ukraine, and showed a Ukrainian driver’s license with a name that changed his name.

The police felt trouble. They did not find him in any of their systems, and asked Alexander if he had a passport. He explained that the passport was at his girlfriend’s house. The police called the girlfriend and asked her.

A friend replied, “No.”

3 September 1999: After a while, Alexander ran away from the apartment in Tula.

He needed help and called his neighbor Sergey.

Two months before the appointment, Sergei reportedly told Alexander that he was “thank you” to several Tula businessmen.

“It is zero,” Sergey was said to have said about Mikhail when he told Alexander what had happened. Sergey offered help, and together they sought out Mikhail.

It is said that Sergey and Mikhail discussed the matter among themselves, but the only thing that should have been agreed upon was that they disagreed. They needed some medium, and decided to look for it.

Alexander, Serge and Mikhail together got into a car and drove out of Tula.

Towards the suburbs and forests next to the Military School.

August 23, 2019: At 15.25, the District Court hearing will be adjourned. 25 minutes ago, Alexander was brought to prison by the Police Immigration Unit (PU).

On the day he was arrested, Poe began work to deport him. The question was just where.

Vera (23) was killed by ex

While Alexander was in custody, the police conducted a series of searches on many of the names he had used in Norway.

Search after search returned with no results, but in the end the police got a hit in the Interpol database. Alexander was charged with a murder in Tula in 1999.

He was wanted internationally for nearly ten years, and Russia, through Interpol, issued a so-called “red notice” against him – an arrest warrant.

Norwegian police called Russian prosecutors and told them that the man they had been looking for for 20 years had been arrested in Norway.

1. December 2021: From a cage with steel machine guns in the Tula district court, Alexander for the first time explained the murder of Mikhail.

He explained that Alexander did not even know about Michael’s death. He denied firing a weapon and spoke against the prosecution’s main evidence:

3 September 1999: Alexander and Sergey explained the same about the events that led to the murder of Mikhail, but both believed that the other fired the weapon.

In the car on the way to the medium outside the city, Sergey and Mikhail began to argue.

Alexander claimed that Sergei suddenly stopped the car along the road, got out of the car and dragged Mikhail with him.

Mikhail tried to defend himself, but the balance of forces, to put it mildly, was skewed. Sergey Mikhail pulled after him when he hit. Then I heard the sound of a fight, that the trunk opened and closed and thundered. Perhaps this was the shot. After a while, Sergey returned. I thought Mikhail simply ran away. I did not ask questions. Alexander said in his testimony that I was afraid for life.

Sergey explained himself differently.

After the car stopped, Alexander is said to have retrieved a shovel from the trunk of the car, and they are said to have dug a hole in the ground to scare the victim, according to Sergei.

At some point, Mikhail had to manage to escape. And Sergey claimed that while running, Alexander shot him until he fell to the ground.

Then Alexander should have gone to the victim and shot him again, according to Sergey.

23. June 2020: The epidemic put an end to air traffic between Norway and Russia, so when Alexander was delivered to Russia, the delivery took place over Storskog in Finnmark.

For the first time in 21 years, he returned to Russian lands.

In the preceding months, Alexander and his Norwegian lawyer Bryngolf Reissens, the Russian-speaking lawyer who represented convict spy Frod Berg, had struggled to stop the extradition.

It is believed that the evidence against Alexander was weak.

– We argued against extradition. There were significant weaknesses in the evidence, the most significant of which was testimony from someone who himself had an interest in pointing to my client, Reissens told Dagbladet.

They were not upheld in district court, and appealed to the Court of Appeals. It wasn’t stuck there either.

– He’s said the same thing all the time: he’s to blame for what someone else has done, says Risnes.

24. December 2021: In the Orthodox Church, Christmas is also celebrated on December 24, but since they follow the Julian calendar, the day comes 13 days later.

Around the same time as Christmas morning fell on Norwegian television, 49-year-old Alexander was convicted of Mikhail’s murder.

He was sentenced to twelve years in prison, which he will serve in a prison colony under the so-called strict regime.

The court emphasized the prosecution’s assessment of the evidence, and did as the Russian courts did 99.78% of cases: A guilty verdict was issued against him in favor of the Public Prosecution.

This is despite the fact that the murder weapon was never found and the bullet that allegedly killed Mikhail disappeared in police custody.

“Not a single piece of evidence speaks for Alexander, except for a witness who has an interest in discrediting him,” the Russian defender told Dagbladet.

Sergey, witness to the crown of the prosecution, does not want to comment on the case.

The Russian lawyer says they will appeal the case.

– If we do not achieve justice in the Russian courts, we will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, says the defender.

Until further notice, Alexander is still held in Tula awaiting his transfer to a penal colony. His girlfriend and child still live in eastern Norway.

Sources: District Court, Court of Appeal, Tula District Court, Russian Central Prosecutor’s Office, Sloboda newspaper.

Photo: Artjom Zjiltsov, NTB, Christian Roth Christensen, Russian Police, Google Maps.