The First Chechen of German Nationalism

“We will be deporting those who don’t know how to behave. We will be cleansing Germany of all the unworthy people to make our country great and decent”, a clean-shaven and well-dressed man speaks in Russian with a Caucasian accent. He is seated in a luxurious interior of carved ceilings and murals. 

He calls himself Noah Krieger — Noah the Warrior — and claims to be the first Chechen in German politics (although at least one Chechen, Bela Bach, has even been a member of parliament before).

Krieger is a member of Alternative for Germany (AfD), the populist right-wing party. It is the largest opposition force in the parliament and the most popular party at the moment. 

According to Noah himself, in the AfD he is promoting an image of an integrated German Muslim, debunking harmful stereotypes about Chechens. Noah wears elegant coats and fedoras, smokes cigars and hosts musical soirées at a luxurious villa in Hanover. In short, he aspires to live a fancy lifestyle of a Weimar Republic bourgeois.

Krieger joined the AfD over a year ago, but only came to prominence on social media this summer. He now has 435,000 followers on Instagram — more than almost any of Germany’s top politicians.

Calling himself a proud Chechen and a devout Muslim, Krieger considers Germany his homeland and is not averse to German nationalist kitsch — at times, of the Nazi kind. He wears German camouflage, uses the Wehrmacht motto Gott mit uns (“God with us”) in his publications, as well as the phrase Deutschland über alles (“Germany above all”), which used to be the first verse of the national anthem during the Third Reich. Krieger likes to talk about the “heritage of the German nation” and addresses his supporters by the word Kameraden, just like the NSDAP members used to (which is why this word is nearly taboo nowadays).

In his Instagram posts, the German flag appears alongside the Russian flag. 

“Our party is pro-Russian, and I personally am very pleased that it is pro-Russian,” Krieger says of the AfD. 

He speaks out in favor of Russia, praises Vladimir Putin, likes videos of raids on migrants on social media and talks a lot about the benefits of cheap Russian gas. Krieger laments the “stupid policy” of sanctions and the U.S. pressure: “Our country is under a thumb. It’s not cool to talk about it, but our country is under America. <...> We have a NATO base, Ramstein, where American soldiers live off our money, which we pay in taxes. Our taxes — their salaries.”

Krieger openly opposes the current German government. He advocates for a “strong German nation”. In his eyes, Nazism in Germany and Islam in Arab countries are similar in some ways — “strict rules” help to “overcome anarchy”.

Despite his provocative rhetoric, the kind that sometimes leads even the high-ranking AfD members to persecution, Krieger has managed to establish himself in the party in a very short time. Now he stands shoulder to shoulder with high-ranking politicians while maintaining ties with Ramzan Kadyrov’s inner circle. IStories and CORRECTIV tell the story of Noah Krieger.

Older brother: Taliban training and an assassination case

Noah Krieger is a pseudonym: the actual name is Murad Salmanovich Dadaev. He was born in Grozny in 1989 and grew up in the village of Samashki. It is notorious for the massacre carried out by the paramilitary units of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs in April 1995, when about 100 civilians were killed. A little later, one of Dadaev’s brothers, Zelimkhan, was also injured during the federal troops’ mop-up operation.

“It was our village that faced the worst. It was completely destroyed. On the night of April 7, there was an assault which they called a ‘mop-up operation’. There were a lot of deaths. I was hiding in the basements at the time and saw it all with my own eyes. I was also there during the second war,” Krieger-Dadaev tells IStories.

Murad himself claimed he had changed his name after marrying a German woman: “It’s easier to live and work in Germany with a German surname.” However, according to the Russian registry office data, Dadaev is married to a woman from his village. And while Dadaev himself has stopped traveling to Russia, his wife visits Chechnya often, according to the data on border crossing, and even the war isn’t a hindrance.

“I left in May 2006, when [Ramzan] Kadyrov had already come to power,” Dadaev says. It was thanks to his older brother Suleiman that he got to Europe. Suleiman is better known in the Austrian press as Muslim Dadaev, a party in a contract killing case.   

On January 13, 2009, Umar Israilov, Ramzan Kadyrov’s former bodyguard, was shot dead in Vienna. Israilov had fought on the side of Ichkeria until the end and was captured by Kadyrov’s forces in 2003. After being tortured in captivity, he went to work for Kadyrov’s security service. Back then, Kadyrov wasn’t the president of Chechnya yet, but the head of security for his father, Akhmad Kadyrov. These details of Israilov’s life are mentioned in the indictment by the Vienna prosecutor’s office and confirmed by two independent sources of the New York Times.

In 2004, Israilov fled Chechnya for Europe and was granted asylum in Austria. In exile, he filed lawsuits with the European Court of Human Rights and testified that Ramzan Kadyrov was personally involved in the tortures and extrajudicial executions of Chechens. Back in the 2000s, when Russia and the world were still largely unaware of the Kadyrov clan, Israilov’s testimony was valuable material.

Three people ended up in the dock in the Israilov murder case: Kadyrov’s associate Ramzan Edilov (known as Otto Kaltenbrunner in Austria), Turpal-Ali Yeshurkaev, and Suleiman (Muslim) Dadaev. The actual executor of the murder, Lecha Bogatyrev, fled to Chechnya and joined Kadyrov’s police force as a commander of a special unit. 

The investigation established that Suleiman, Murad Dadayev’s older brother, and Kadyrov’s associate Edilov had run the Chechen Cultural Society in Austria, an establishment created to gather information about their compatriots living in the country. In the Israilov operation, the older Dadayev’s task was to conduct external surveillance. The plan was to kidnap Israilov and take him to Chechnya; killing him was just plan B. The Vienna prosecutor’s office considered Ramzan Kadyrov to be the mastermind behind the assassination.

During the trial, the older Dadaev said that he had graduated from a military academy in Volgograd and, after the First Chechen War, had worked in the security forces of Ichkeria. In 1998, Dokka Umarov, the future “terrorist number one” in Russia, invited him to a Taliban training camp in Pakistan. After the training, he was recruited to the “special department” of the Supreme Sharia Court of Ichkeria — the name given to the internal intelligence service in the unrecognized republic, similar to Russia’s FSB.

In 2003, he was sent on a mission to Europe to investigate the disappearance of the funds Ichkerian fighters had been supposed to receive from Saudi Arabia. On the orders of Umarov, Suleiman stayed: he changed his name to Muslim Dadayev, was granted asylum in Austria, and brought his brothers to Europe.

Murad told IStories that the brothers moved to Europe after one of their family members had been killed in the war while fighting for Ichkeria. On the day of the murder, it was also one of Murad’s brothers that Suleiman called several times. However, the prosecutor’s office was unable to prove whether he knew about Suleiman’s intentions or whether he was even involved in planning the crime. Murad was summoned to court back then, but he declined to testify against his relative. According to the younger Dadaev, when Israilov was killed, Murad himself wasn’t even in Austria.

The Austrian authorities questioned Suleiman Dadaev’s full testimony, but acknowledged that he had definitely undergone intelligence training. The older Dadaev called himself an Islamist and Kadyrov’s opponent, but, according to the witnesses’ testimony, he was not a strict observer of Islamic dogma — in the evenings he would sometimes enjoy a glass of beer in Vienna. 

And although during the interrogations Suleiman insisted he still supported Dokka Umarov, whom he called the president of Chechnya, this did not deter him from traveling to Russia. As IStories discovered from the leaked Russian databases, in 2008, immediately before the Israilov assassination, the older Dadaev traveled to Chechnya and got a Russian passport, even though he had already been registered as a terrorist in Russia by that time.

In 2011, Suleiman Dadaev was sentenced to 19 years in prison in Austria for his involvement in the Israilov assassination, and would be supposed to be serving his sentence as of today. However, as IStories have discovered, on February 24, 2022, he flew to Moscow straight from Vienna. Then he obtained a new driver’s license in Chechnya and a residence permit in Moscow, divorced and recently received a new passport in the name of Surkho Shikaro — his nickname among the Chechens in Austria.

The Austrian Ministry of Justice did not provide any substantial comment regarding Suleiman Dadaev’s release. In response to our request they stated that, in accordance with the law, they can release convicts in such cases on parole after serving half of their sentence, provided that the convict agrees to leave the country.

“I heard they had planned to deport him,” Amina Larsson, a lawyer with Vayfond, a Chechen human rights organization in Sweden, told IStories. “But have they really done it? That’s obviously terrible. It gives other killers the green light. Kadyrov will now say [to his killers]: ’We’ll bail you out, just do this and that, and everything will be fine.’"

“It can all be found online. What could I possibly be hiding? Yes, my brother was imprisoned for this... is imprisoned, to be more precise, for his crime. What does this have to do with me?” Murad Dadaev responds to a question about his brother, but corrects himself after a follow-up question. “Well, yes, he’s been released... He’s living his life. He has served his sentence. He’s not on the run and isn’t hiding from anyone. To be honest, I’m not really keeping in touch with him now. He’s living his own life and has distanced himself from us.”

IStories did not succeed in contacting Suleiman Dadaev.

Villa for the AfD

Murad Dadaev does not hide his real name. In 2020, he established a company under his initials, DMS, in Hanover. According to Murad himself, this brand encompasses an aesthetic medicine clinic, a construction business, a legal service for car owners, and a historic villa near the city center that can be rented for coworking and events.

Dadaev says that he registers his businesses under his wife’s name. However, IStories have been unable to find any evidence that the companies under his management or under the management of a woman named Stefanie Krieger are conducting any business or showing any financial results. The only thing that stands out is his 19th-century neo-baroque mansion, measuring about 850 square meters, once built for Karl Haake, a piano manufacturer. Inside one can find heavy wooden panels, numerous moldings, and marble staircases.

The villa is leased to Dadaev, according to the court documents available to IStories and CORRECTIV. In our conversation, he insists the villa belongs to him: “I lease it to myself.”

According to the estimates by the Hanover real estate agents we spoke to, the rent could cost Dadaev around €17,000-25,000 per month excluding utilities — an unaffordable amount for someone whose businesses are effectively defunct (according to the latest available data from 2023, Dadaev’s company reported a loss of more than €200,000 back then). 

According to a source familiar with the financial situation surrounding Dadaev’s villa, two years ago DMS did indeed rent the mansion to sublet it as workspace, but the business did not take off.

Dadaev then informed the villa’s owner that he would now be holding Alternative for Germany meetings there, the source said. The owner warned that in that case he would evict Dadaev’s company from the mansion. 

It didn’t work. Now the villa has effectively been seized, according to our sources in the real estate market: while Dadaev’s company would initially pay the rent regularly, it now fails to, and it is also ignoring the eviction lawsuit (the court ruling is at the disposal of IStories and CORRECTIV). Meanwhile, the mansion has been turned into a kind of headquarters for the AfD Hanover branch. Dadaev says that he rents the premises to the AfD, and the party members come to the villa to various gatherings as guests.    

The leadership of the Hanover AfD cell sometimes meets at Dadaev’s house in its entirety, led by Jörn König, the deputy chairman of the AfD faction in the Bundestag. The meetings spark local anti-fascists’ protests — they throw paint at the villa and break windows there, much to the owner’s displeasure. Dadaev himself is already calling on his supporters to organize a “hunt for anti-fascists”. “If anyone throws anything [at the villa’s windows] again, I’ll take my gun and shoot them in the head,” he says to IStories, supposedly half-jokingly.

Next to Dadaev, one can often see a 28-year-old Bundestag deputy Micha Fehre, a supporter of Björn Höcke, the leader of the AfD ultra-nationalist wing, which is recognized as extremist by the German intelligence agencies. Höcke’s team are the most fervent Putin apologists within the AfD. They advocate for halting arms supplies to Ukraine and for maintaining the purchases of Russian gas, as well as justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as Putin’s right to “secure a buffer zone.”

According to Dadaev, he has long been acquainted with another high-ranking representative of the AfD’s ultra-nationalist wing, Höcke’s confidant and an MP, Stephan Brandner.

The Chechen AfD functionary probably also maintains contact with 

Markus Frohnmaier, a Bundestag deputy closest to the Russian leadership. The deputy mentions Dadaev in his Instagram posts and follows him on social media despite not following many accounts overall.

Frohnmaier used to visit Russia regularly and, according to a Dossier Center investigation based on the leaked correspondence involving a Russian presidential administration employee, was considered a MP “completely under the Kremlin control”. In the fall of 2025, Frohnmaier decided to visit Russia again, which caused a scandal in the Bundestag — other German politicians believe that he might be passing secret information on to the Kremlin, which is particularly sensitive in the context of the Putin — NATO confrontation.

“Yes, Marcus and I are very close. We talk a lot, he’s a very nice, smart, intelligent guy. I like his policies,” says Dadaev. “On Saturday, I was in Prague with my family, and they invited me over when they saw that I was in Prague: ’Oh, we’re here, come to our event. I came, Alice Weidel [co-chair of the AfD] was there, we hugged. Markus was there too. He said to her, ’Oh, this is Herr Krieger, our Chechen warrior.’”

Frohnmaier himself, in response to a request from IStories and CORRECTIV, stated that he didn’t work with or talk to Dadayev-Krieger personally and only knows him from his social media activity.

No public AfD meetings in Prague had been announced on the dates mentioned by Dadayev. We have sent inquiries to the party’s deputies.

Villa for Kadyrov’s people

“He emerged somewhat unexpectedly. In fact, he did not start out as a politician. We thought he was a lawyer. Many open dissidents would even take photos with him,” Vayfond sources say about Dadaev. According to the human rights activists, Dadaev would meet those coming from Chechnya to Europe and “help them start off” — at the same time, according to Vayfond sources, "trying to lure them over to Kadyrov’s side". In the conversation with IStories, Dadaev himself says that he is simply happy to have an opportunity to chat with fellow Chechens of any political convictions and invite them over for tea.

In Dadaev’s circle the human rights activists have noticed people they tried to protect from deportation as those faced real danger in their home country, says Vayfond lawyer Amina Larsson. For example, Ali Bataev, who sought political asylum in Switzerland as an opponent of Kadyrov in 2022, appears in a photo from Dadaev’s villa on his Instagram, as noted by IStories.  

"I help anyone who asks me to. I never refuse. Even if these people oppose Russia - if they come to live here, I welcome them too. It’s my duty to help people. I’m like a doctor: I can treat anyone. People think I’ve taken a side. That’s not true," Dadaev replies.

He does indeed present himself as a lawyer on social media. In the conversation with IStories, Dadaev says that he graduated from the University of Hanover with a law degree. However, in the autobiographical information forms he submitted when applying for a Russian passport, he only indicated a year he spent studying at Chechen State University in Grozny (this information is at the disposal of IStories and CORRECTIV). 

Murad used to have a thick beard and practise martial arts in Grozny with Kadyrov’s Akhmat club fighters. He still practices in Germany. Combat sports are an important element of pro-Kadyrov propaganda in Europe. “Kadyrov’s athletes played a very big role in deceiving many young people and turning them to Kadyrov’s side,” says Larsson.

Dadaev tells IStories about his long-standing friendship with Khamzat Chimaev, the UFC star middleweight champion and Ramzan Kadyrov’s favorite fighter who is also a coach of the Chechen leader’s children.

In Germany, Dadaev remains close to Kadyrov’s circle. Khamzat Kadyrov, Ramzan Kadyrov’s nephew and security issues advisor to the Chechen leader, leaves encouraging comments on Dadaev’s Instagram page. A source in the diaspora says that Dadaev is close friends with Hussein Agayev, a member of the Chechen diaspora in Europe who is said to be Kadyrov’s new representative in Germany. 

Agaev is a co-founder of the Terek Cultural Center in Hamburg. According to Reinhard Bingener and Markus Wehner, authors of “The Silent War: How Autocrats Attack Germany” book, the real purpose of this organization is to monitor the Chechen diaspora on behalf of Ramzan Kadyrov.

Dadaev himself says that he does not know Hussein Agayev. He says a lot of people comment on his social media pages. “I know Selim Agayev, he’s an athlete,” he clarifies.

Selim Agayev is Hussein’s son, who performs for Ramzan Kadyrov’s fighting club. The head of Chechnya even personally congratulates Agayev Jr. on his victories.

Other co-founders of the Terek center are Timur Dugazaev and Said-Magomed Ibragimov. Dugazaev is a well-known athlete and European champion in mixed martial arts, who has been awarded the Akhmat Kadyrov Order, the highest award of Chechnya. He was added to the U.S. sanctions list due to his proximity to Kadyrov. In 2018, according to a Spiegel investigation, he received an order to kidnap Kadyrov’s bodyguard Mansur S., who had fled in 2012, from Berlin. A few weeks later, Mansur appeared in an Instagram photo in the military uniform, in a Chechen special forces unit. 

It was Dugazayev who was previously referred to as Kadyrov’s representative in Europe. However, according to the sources in the diaspora interviewed by IStories, he has been recently sent away from Germany and is now living either in the UAE or in Saudi Arabia. Earlier, the Spiegel investigation revealed that Dugazaev had obtained German citizenship illegally (he used the personal data of his younger brother, Islam).

Vayfond members have also heard about Dugazayev’s expulsion, although they emphasize the information is not yet confirmed.

Said-Magomed Ibragimov, a Chechen from Hamburg, is a close friend of Dadaev and a frequent guest at the villa where AfD meets. He used to run a security company and a Chechen fight club, Team Wolf Hamburg, which human rights activists link to the pro-Kadyrov Guerilla Vaynakh Nation biker gang. The gang members have several times been suspected of involvement in violent crime. Ironically, Ibragimov himself has played a Chechen mafioso in 4 Blocks, a hugely popular German series about the drug cartels of Berlin’s Neukölln district. 

Ibragimov’s “fighters,” along with Ibragimov himself, would wear the emblem of the Bergmann (“Highlander”) special forces battalion, a unit of Hitler’s army commanded by Theodor Oberländer and consisting of people from Caucasus regions. Ibragimov was born in 1972, but his nickname on social media contains the numbers “88,” which is a widely used code for "Heil Hitler".

Ibragimov has been several times seen in the company of Chechnya’s deputy prime minister and former commander of the Akhmat special forces unit, Abuzayed Vismuradov, and the current head of the Chechen government, Magomed Daudov. They would regularly visit Europe between 2012 and 2017. Vismuradov is now under EU sanctions for torture of LGBT people and Kadyrov’s critics, while Daudov is under the sanctions of the Baltic states, Poland and the U.S.

“They come to me when they have problems. I provide legal services. I have my own law office here. When we need security, I ask those who have security companies. They come and provide security. When a person from Kadyrov came to the Netherlands, they were also part of his security detail there. I am open-minded, I am not afraid to work with different people. As a lawyer, I have every right to do so,” Dadaev tells IStories about his acquaintances.

Due to the nature of his work, he explains, he is not accustomed to paying attention to people’s criminal past or present and views members of organized crime groups as just clients who are willing to pay large sums of money.

"Maybe he’s a member of some mafia group, but... we do deal with criminal law here, and I’ve dealt with the criminal bosses. <...> I don’t deny that he might have some connections. Maybe. As Chechens, we keep in touch, despite our different walks of life. <...> We work with anyone who comes to us. Kurds, Albanians, all kinds of groups. Hells Angels, bikers. They often have problems because they are involved in security businesses and lead a nocturnal lifestyle," Dadaev says about his work.

The Hells Angels biker gang, mentioned by the AfD member, is also considered an organized crime group by the German authorities. They have been linked to the aforementioned Guerrilla Nation gang.

“There are many people involved in crime who nevertheless lead decent lives,” says the Hanover politician.

Right now, the Kadyrov community in Europe is undergoing a kind of a restructuring under the leadership of Agaev, and Murad Dadaev is playing a significant role in this, the diaspora believes. Vayfond members are also convinced that it was Kadyrov’s decision to bring Murad Dadaev into German politics. 

“They accuse me [both Chechens and Germans] of being some kind of agent. And I say, I don’t mind being an agent, so would you pay me instead of spreading these rumors? But no one pays me. I live on my own, I work long hours. These accusations against me are just talk,” Dadaev comments. "I have never been involved in any clans and do not intend to be. I remain neutral. I tell all Chechens: don’t argue, don’t quarrel. My position is neutral, everyone knows that. Some people don’t like the fact that I support the Russian authorities and Kadyrov. I believe that this man has achieved a lot, and that is a fact. The fact that he built a republic deserves respect."

Dadaev-Kriger is now unsure whether he should continue his career in the AfD. He complains that his party peers often ask him to refrain from making overly radical statements, and his support for Russia is no longer met with unconditional approval (Alice Weidel, for example, is now criticising MPs for travelling to Russia). “To be honest, war isn’t so scary for me. When you know you have enemies, you can and you must defend yourself. It’s a little different than when you are surrounded by lip servers. German politicians hate me simply because I’m from Russia,” he says.

AfD failed to respond to CORRECTIV and IStories’ inquiries about Murad Dadaev-Kriger.

German-language version (CORRECTIV)