Russia has opened a criminal case against an ally of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny over allegations of violent invasion, which its supporters deny, Reuters reported on Friday.
Lyubov Sobol, a leading figure in the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation, was also detained for 48 hours, Navalny said. He too tweeted video and a photo he said he showed the police breaking into his home and placing him in a police vehicle.
Russian authorities are accusing Sobol and others of breaking into an elderly woman’s apartment in Moscow while wearing uniforms worn by state consumer health surveillance after cheating on a delivery man to allow them to enter the complex, according to Reuters.
But Sobol’s supporters say she was at the apartment of a security guard allegedly involved in Navalny’s near-fatal poisoning, according to Reuters.
“They are arresting the mother of a young child for two days to tell everyone: don’t dig deeper in this case,” tweeted Navalny in Russian, according to a Reuters translation. “Don’t you dare mess with our murderers and poisoners and knock on your doors. These killers are untouchable. “
The alleged Russian FSB agent was the one Navalny said earlier this week that he cheated to admit his involvement in the poisoning and reveal details of the plot, according to The Associated Press.
Navalny said in a phone call with the alleged agent, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, that he was an officer of the Russian national security council conducting an interrogation and caused Kudryavtsev to reveal that a nervous agent was placed in Navalny’s underwear.
Navalny is recovering in an undisclosed location in Germany, where he was hospitalized in August after he fell ill on a plane leaving the city of Tomsk.
In October, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said that the toxic chemicals taken from Navalny’s blood and urine were related to the Novichok group of nerve agents.
A joint investigation by CNN and Bellingcat released earlier this month found that an elite FSB unit poisons up to 10 people has followed Navalny for years.
The FSB denied Navalny’s account.
But earlier this week, the State Department also blamed the FSB.
“The United States believes that officials from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) used a Novichok nerve agent to poison Navalny,” the department said in a statement on Wednesday. “There is no plausible explanation for Mr. Navalny’s poisoning other than the involvement and responsibility of the Russian government.”