This is the moment one of Israel‘s most dangerous criminals is shot dead outside a petrol station at point-blank range.
CCTV footage shows the suspect walking up to the building entrance wearing a grey hoodie, black cargo trousers and a white baseball cap with his hands in his pockets.
As he ascends the steps to the front doors, three men – including mafia boss Yanis Yushvaev – exit the building.
As they leave the petrol station, the unknown assassin turns around and pulls a handgun from his hoodie pocket before shooting Yushvaev in the back of the head at point-blank range.
The two other men flinch in terror as the gunman runs from the scene in Caesarea, Israel, on Sunday.
According to social media reports, the killer ‘used a hyperrealistic silicone mask of the “second skin” type’ to conceal his identity.
He then ‘fled the scene in a getaway car, which a dozen or so minutes later was found abandoned and set on fire in a nearby town’.
Yushvaev, 40, is the head of a crime group with links to the Jewish Caucasus community, Israeli police have said.
This image shows the seconds before the gunman opened fire on mafia boss Yanis Yushvaev, 40, at point-blank range outside a petrol station in Israel on Sunday
Yushvaev had been arrested several times in the past on suspicion of violent crimes including shootings and grenade attacks
Local media report that the mafia boss was well known to police and had been arrested several times in the past on suspicion of violent crimes – including shootings, grenade attacks and vehicle arson – however he was never convicted.
In February, he was arrested at Ben Gurion Airport, in Tel Aviv, after a trip to Moscow but was released days later due to insufficient evidence.
And in November last year, a police spokesman said Yushvaev was the boss of ‘a criminal gang involved in blood feuds’ during a court hearing following a police request to extend his custody on suspicion of conspiracy to commit a crime.
The 40-year-old is understood to have been taken to hospital but was later pronounced dead.
Yushvaev ‘had no pulse and was not breathing, and was suffering from significant injuries’, according to the Israeli ambulance service.
Police, who said the killing was criminally motivated, launched a manhunt for the suspect after he escaped.
Officers set up roadblocks and deployed a helicopter in the search for the gunman.
Alongside his criminal empire, Yushvaev was a restaurant owner in Or Akiva and last year described himself as a ‘legitimate businessman’ who was ‘very well-established’
In an interview with Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 he said he ‘drives a Bentley, and that bothers police’.
At the time, an Israeli police source told the TV network that it is ‘hard to convict’ Yushvaev because he ‘almost never talks on the phone’ and had the ‘complete loyalty’ of his henchmen, who would not give him up during police interrogation.
