Russia’s federal penitentiary has one day ordered Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to report to his office or be jailed
MOSCOW – Russia’s federal penitentiary service on Monday gave Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny a day to report to his office or charge if he returns to Russia after the deadline.
Navalny is recovering in Germany after an August poisoning with a nervous agent, whom he blamed on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have denied involvement.
The Federal Penitentiary Service issued a statement on Monday saying that an article by doctors at the Berlin Charite Hospital and published in the medical journal The Lancet indicated that Navalny had fully recovered.
The penitentiary service requested that Navalny appear at his office in accordance with the terms of a 3-and-a-half-year suspended sentence he received for a 2014 conviction. .
Navalny’s lawyer, Vadim Kobzev, wrote on Twitter that the agency told the politician to show up at his office on Tuesday morning. Navalny, who previously said he intended to return to Russia once he fully recovered, scoffed at the request, saying the Federal Penitentiary Service’s reference to The Lancet article was the government’s acceptance of being poisoned.
“That means the state has officially acknowledged the poisoning.” And where is the criminal case then? “
Navalny fell into a coma while on a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow on August 20. The plane landed urgently and was transferred from a hospital in Siberia to the hospital in Berlin two days later. Laboratories in Germany, France and Sweden, as well as tests carried out by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, have determined that he was exposed to a Novichok nerve agent from the Soviet era.
Russian authorities have insisted that doctors who treated Navalny in Siberia before he was flown to Germany found no sign of poison and challenged German officials to provide evidence of his poisoning. They refused to open a full-fledged criminal investigation, citing a lack of evidence that Navalny had been poisoned.
The European Union has imposed sanctions on six Russian officials and a state research institute after tests carried out by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons concluded that Navalny had been exposed in Novichok. Russia has rejected with its own sanctions against EU officials.
Last week, Navalny released a phone call he said he made to a man he described as an alleged member of a group of Federal Security Service or FSB officers who allegedly poisoned him in August and then she tried to cover him. up.
Navalny made the call a few hours before the Bellingcat investigation group published a report claiming that FSB agents with chemical weapons training had been following him for years and were in the immediate vicinity when he was poisoned.
On appeal, Navalny introduced himself as a security officer and deceived his interlocutor by sharing details about the alleged poisoning operation and acknowledging that he was involved in “processing” Navalny’s underwear so that there were “no traces” of poison.
The FSB rejected Navalny’s record as false.