King of Russian Mafia ‘Grandpa Hassan’ killed by sniper in Moscow

'King of Russian Mafia' Grandpa Hassan killed in Moscow (RIA Noosti / Evgeny Biyatov)

One of Russia’s most notorious criminal masterminds, Mafia godfather Aslan Usoyan, also known as ‘Grandpa Hassan,’ was shot dead by a sniper rifle in central Moscow on Wednesday, police said.

A sniper fired six shots at Usoyan from the window of a nearby house as the 75-year-old was walking out of a restaurant in Moscow’s Arbat district.

His bodyguards failed to cover him in time, and the crime boss died from his injuries on the way to hospital.

A woman walking out of the restaurant at the same time as Usoyan was also lightly injured in her leg and chest and taken to hospital. She turned out to be “just a passerby,” police later reported.

‘Grandpa Hassan’ had managed to survive two previous assassination attempts: A would-be killer missed him in Sochi in 1998, and another one seriously injured Usoyan and his bodyguard in a 2010 Moscow shooting.

Usoyan, an ethnic Kurdish Yezidi mobster, started his criminal career in Georgia and acquired the highly respected status of ‘thief in law’ – the elite of the Soviet and Post-Soviet criminal underworld.

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Aslan Usoyan

A 2010 photo shows the scene of an attempted murder of suspected criminal mastermind Aslan Usoyan in Moscow, Russia on Septemer 16, 2010 (RIA Novosti / Andrey Stenin)