Turkey extradites contract killer of Georgian businessman

Turkish authorities on Thursday extradited Farid Gurbanov, the contract killer of Georgian businessman Besarion Khardziani, who was assassinated in March 2015, to Georgia, the Georgian Prosecutor General’s Office announced. 

Gurbanov was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment by all three instances of Georgian courts for premeditated murder, illegal possession of firearms, illegal border crossing, and using forged documents.

The convict entered Georgia in January 2015 with a fake Ukrainian passport under the alias Oleksandr Dametov, accompanied by an accomplice, the Office said. 

He then rented a flat in central Tbilisi and purchased a Honda moped, which did not require registration, to monitor Khardziani’s movements.

The contracted assassin later killed the businessman at his Tbilisi residence with three gunshots, including a final shot to the head, before fleeing the country through the Sarpi checkpoint in western Georgia on the same day.

Gurbanov has been sentenced to life imprisonment by Georgian courts, while his accomplice, a foreign national who remains at large, was sentenced in absentia to 19 years in prison for aiding the crime.

The Prosecutor General’s Office also noted Gurbanov had been wanted through Interpol since April 2015, with investigations still ongoing to identify the individual who ordered Khardziani’s murder.