Aleksandr Podrabinek

22 January 2026

An extract from A Third Life

by Aleksandr Podrabinek

Source: Facebook

The trial of Egisto Ott, a former employee of the Austrian Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism (BVT), is underway in Vienna. Ott is charged with spying for Russia. He is also accused of treason and of endangering Austria’s security, as well as the safety of the individuals he spied on. The targets of his espionage were Russian citizens who had fled the country, including a journalist and a former member of the Russian intelligence services. According to the Austrian prosecutor’s office, Ott received over €80,000 for his work serving Moscow.

When I read about this on Deutsche Welle, I was reminded of my own encounters with the Austrian national security service. It’s something of an odd story. I want to share it in the event that someone will find it interesting. The bulk of this text is taken from my book A Third Life.

In 1995, a Chechen couple named Abdullah and Zarema Erzanukaev left Russia for Greece with their three children. Meanwhile, Chekists were doggedly searching for Abdullah, who was considered a close associate of Chechen field commander Shamil Basaev. In the summer of 2000, Zarema Erzanukaeva arrived in Russia to visit her family. She presented her Greek passport at Sheremetyevo airport and was arrested; by law she should have presented her Russian passport. This was a trivial offence, which did not even merit a short jail term of a few days under administrative law, but the Chekists needed a way to her husband.

I took up the case and engaged the public, the press, and lawyers. Ultimately, after Zarema had spent several months in Lefortovo prison, the campaign bore fruit. The case against her was closed, and she was released. On the day of her release, I drove up to the gates of Lefortovo with her lawyers and some journalists. We feared they would re-arrest her immediately on new charges or simply set up some kind of provocation. And indeed, FSB officers arrived to greet her too; their car with its tinted windows was parked right there. But given the number of people present, they didn’t risk taking any action. We took Zarema to her friends’ apartment on Prospekt Mira, and strictly forbade her to leave or even open the door to anyone. 

A few days later I went to fetch her with Sergei Kovalev in his official car (he was a deputy in the State Duma at the time). We pulled up right outside the building entrance. Zarema got in, with us immediately behind her, and we drove to Sheremetyevo airport. Chekists who had been monitoring the building tailed us in their car. At the airport, we went immediately to the VIP zone, where high-ranking government officials go through passport control. Along with Kovalev we were let through with no questions asked. However, the agents following us also got through without difficulty. A minute later, Zarema and I had passed border control. Kovalev and the agents remained on the Russian side of border control, while Zarema and I took the shuttle bus to the plane. A few hours later, we landed in Istanbul, where friends met us at the airport. I passed Zarema directly into the hands of her husband Abdullah, so to speak.

That’s how I met Abdullah Erzanukaev, whom Russian law enforcement considered Basaev’s right-hand man, his financier and his ‘wallet’. He was an even-tempered man, about the same age as me, level-headed and taciturn. I never asked how close he was to Basaev. Such questions would have been inappropriate, not to mention dangerous — there was a real manhunt out for Basaev, and the FSB or GRU could have used anyone at all for their purposes. However, there was no doubt that Abdullah did not participate in combat or terrorist acts. He was a civil engineer, a staunchly peaceful man who loved his family and adored his children. He harboured absolutely no hatred toward Russians, who as a nation thoroughly deserved hatred for what our federal troops perpetrated in Chechnya. 

We remained friends after that. I always visited him when I happened to be in Paris, where he and his family moved from Austria after Zarema’s release. Abdullah was a successful businessman, with a stake in a transport company and a furniture factory in Spain. He spent nearly everything he earned on humanitarian aid for Chechnya and assistance for Chechen refugees in Azerbaijan. He organized trips to Chechnya for Western journalists, ensuring their safety in the difficult conditions of the war with Russia. It was clear that the FSB was eager to settle scores with him. 

In February 2001, an article was published in the Austrian magazine Profil titled ‘Ungluckliche Reiseroute’ (‘The Unfortunate Itinerary’). The author, Edith Meinhart, gleefully exposed the careless border police officers who had allowed Abdullah E., allegedly wanted for contract killings, to enter Austria. And what a time to be so careless! Right when Mr. Putin, president of Russia, was paying an official visit to Austria! The magazine published a page from Erzanukaev’s passport with his photograph. And although a black bar covered his eyes in the photograph, for anyone who knew him there was no doubt: Erzanukaev was being accused of contract killings.

Abdullah filed a suit for defamation in the Austrian courts, demanding a retraction of the defamatory claims. He called two witnesses: Borzali Ismailov, a Chechen émigré living in Paris, to testify about his business and charitable activities; and me, ready and willing to explain to the court the circumstances of his wife’s persecution in Russia. 

On the 20 March 2002, we met at the Mercury Hotel in Vienna, and the following day we headed to the court. There was no one else in the court room, save for a young guy writing something down in his notebook. The judge opened the hearing, heard the testimonies of the plaintiff, the defendant and a witness from the MVD. Before proceeding to question the plaintiff’s witnesses — Borzali and I — the judge asked a representative from Profil magazine where it had obtained the information to show the plaintiff was the organizer or executor of contract killings. The defendant looked somewhat discombobulated, and we knew why — the materials for the article had been given to the magazine by FSB officers from the Russian embassy in Austria. The defendant could not admit this; it would deal a serious blow to the magazine’s reputation. But the judge didn’t give a damn about the magazine’s reputation. He was only interested in the circumstances of the case in order to reach a fair judgement. After some umming and ahhing, the defendant said that he could not provide any information about the source of the information. 

In response, the judge smiled and, in a didactic tone, explained to the defendant that the magazine would certainly lose the case unless it presented the court with convincing evidence that the plaintiff was a murderer and terrorist. After this, the judge adjourned the hearing.

We left the court very satisfied. This wasn’t Moscow’s justice system. The security services don’t run everything here, and that goes for the courts too! 

Having returned to the hotel to gather our things, we got into the Audi that Borzali and Abdullah were driving and decided to return to Paris immediately. I went with them. As we headed towards Salzburg, we noticed three cars tailing us. In one of the cars was the same young man who had been scribbling things in his notebook in the court room. “Evidently, the Austrian intelligence agencies are working hand in hand with their Russian counterparts,” we surmised, picking up speed in order to leave Austria as quickly as we could. 

130 kilometres from Vienna, a police patrol car emerged from the side of the road and flagged us down. The officers spent a long time scrutinising our driving licences and vehicle documents, after which they declared they would be fining the driver 60 euros for not having a special permit to drive on Austrian roads. Who knew that you needed that sort of thing? We paid the fine and thought that that would be the end of things and we could be on our way. But the officers had other ideas. They asked to see our documents. We handed them over. They took them and went off to the nearest petrol station to make copies. We waited patiently. Eventually they returned and smirkingly informed us they had taken copies but wouldn’t be giving our documents back. Instead, they told us to follow them to the local police station in Amstetten. 

We had no choice, so off we drove. Our attempts to find out why we were being detained and what we were accused of yielded no results. The police wouldn’t tell us anything and simply told us to wait. It soon became clear that “a bit” was going to be rather a lot longer than the odd hour. Meanwhile, it was already dark and pouring with rain outside, as the two of us sat in the police station’s reception area, completely in the dark as to what we were waiting for or how long it was all going to last. 

Three and a half hours later it became clear, when two employees of the Austrian National Security Agency (NSA) showed up with a translator. They were very eager to talk to us. Abdullah and Borzali were taken into their offices, but I — apparently of no operational interest to them — was left sitting in the reception area.

Fed up with all this I decided it was time to act. First, I called the editorial office at home, then Irena Lasota in Washington. Word of our detention began to spread. If, for some unknown reason, only two Chechen emigrants had been detained, no one would have been particularly surprised. But the detention of a human rights journalist in Western Europe is an extraordinary event. Despite the late hour, reports of the detention of a Russian journalist and two Chechens in Austria prompted human rights and journalism organizations in Europe and the United States to immediately submit inquiries to the authorities in Vienna.

A few hours later, I felt the effects of this campaign. It was already deep into the night when both NSA employees came into the reception area. One — seemingly the more senior of the two — was tall, well-groomed, wearing an overcoat and a disdainful expression on his face. The second was a cheerful black guy in a jacket, even taller than his counterpart and built like Schwarzenegger. The more senior-looking one asked for my passport, in response to which I — as is our custom — asked for his. The venerable officer on duty who was standing nearby grinned approvingly into his moustache, which told me there was no love lost between the police and the NSA here either. The NSA officer pulled out his ID card and showed it to me, displayed in the palm of his hand. I began reading his first and last name aloud, recording it on a tiny tape recorder for good measure. For some reason, this infuriated him. He grabbed my arm, I pushed him away, the black guy tensed, ready to grab me at the first command, but none came. The policeman said something in German, and both officers from the NSA calmed down. Then they told me I was free to go and pointed to the door.

Freedom is good but cold March rain is not. Abdulla had the car keys and was still being questioned. I stood clinging to the wall of the police station, attempting unsuccessfully to shield myself from the slanting autumnal rain under the small overhang of roof. After a while, I became so stiff with cold I disregarded detainee ethics and knocked on the front door. I was let in, and the same gendarme who had smirked under his moustache even brought me a hot cup of tea, which could not have been more welcome. 

Neither of us knew English well, but we had a conversation nonetheless. He told me the station had in the proceeding few hours been receiving uninterrupted phone calls from human rights organisations in various countries protesting my arrest. And they had been receiving even more calls from news organisations. The police were very distressed by all this and did not know how to answer them – we had been arrested on the orders of the National Security Agency, so it was up to them to respond. All who rang were re-directed to the Ministry of Internal Affairs Office in Vienna. In the end, the Minister of Internal Affairs was woken up in the middle of the night. He ordered my immediate release. So I was released into the rain, and I had gone back in! We joked that it was better to be in the station in that weather than outside, and the moustachioed gendarme said I could sue the intelligence officer who had grabbed me by the arm, and I would probably win. He even promised to serve as a witness for the prosecution. I must be honest, I had not expected this kind of support from the police. 

The police are probably not great friends with the intelligence services anywhere in the world and would never pass up such a chance to make a dig at them. This police officer was no different. My phone was completely out of battery, and I asked to use a wall charger for half an hour. There were chargers in the waiting room, the control room and all the other rooms, but the moustachioed gendarme took me into the room where Abdulla was being questioned. He calmly indicated a free charger to me, and I plugged my phone in. The National Security Agency people were looking at me with annoyance, not understanding what I was still doing there if I had been released. My moustachioed well-wisher wanted to show them that while they could order my release, it was he who had the power to decide if I could come back in.

At the break of dawn, Abdulla and Borzali were taken from the station and driven in a police car to a town a few miles from the motorway. I just managed to take the car keys from them and follow them. Their release was deliberately delayed at the police station in Amstetten, and I dozed in the car outside in the street awaiting their release. In the end, they were both fined $100 euros for something or other and Erzanukaev was banned from entering Austria for a year. Both men were ordered to leave Austria without delay. This we would have done long ago had they not arrested us on the way to Salzburg.  

We left Austria quickly. Does anyone know what they even mean by ‘without delay’? Anyway, we hit the gas. The road had dried after the night’s rain, and the journey went like a dream. Abdulla and Borzali, both tired after the nighttime questioning, dozed off while I drove at 200 km an hour, marvelling at the glorious Audi A4’s power and responsiveness. At one point I turned a corner and Borzali woke up – he thought we were going too slowly. He took the wheel and we cruised at 260 km an hour along Austria’s – then Germany’s – autobahns. I’ve never gone faster in my life! We were in Paris by late evening. 

Abdulla’s lawsuit finished the following year. The magazine Profil refused either to admit its cooperation with the intelligence services or Russian diplomats, or name its sources. The magazine therefore received from the court a just decision in favour of Erzanukaev, ordering Profil to publish a retraction and to pay him 1500 euros in compensation, in addition to all his legal costs – including the cost of my plane ticket to Austria.  

Abdullah Erzanukaev lived a while longer in Paris, awaiting a decision on his immigration status. A Paris court was supposed to make a final decision on his permanent residence permit in April 2006. He asked me to come and testify about the persecution to which his family had been subjected in Moscow. I promised to do so – but failed to keep that promise. At the end of March I was held for a while in a prison in Belarus, so I could not get to Paris. Erzanukaev received his residence permit regardless. 

Soon after this, his whole family moved to the south of France, to Nice. Five years later, in Nice, Abdullah was killed by a gunshot in the house of an acquaintance in very unclear circumstances. 

From the book «Третья жизнь»:

http://libro-book.org/shop/114/desc/tretja-zhizn (РФ)

https://www.naffy.io/librobook/-the-third-life-uX6 (Европа)

Translated by Nina dePalma, Nathalie Wilson and Oscar Seecharan