Russia’s federal prison service once gave the Kremlin’s top critic, Alexei Navalny, to report to his office or face prison
MOSCOW – Russia’s federal prison service on Monday gave a major Kremlin critic, Alexei Navalny, to report to his office or face prison if he returns to Russia after the deadline.
Navalny is recovering in Germany after his poisoning in August with a nervous agent, which he attributed to the Kremlin. Russian authorities have denied his involvement.
The Federal Prison Service issued a statement on Monday saying that an article by doctors at Berlin’s Charite hospital and published in the medical journal The Lancet indicated that Navalny had fully recovered.
The prison service demanded that Navalny report to his office, under the terms of a suspended 3 1/2 year sentence he received for a 2014 conviction. If he misses the deadline, he could be arrested, the statement said.
Navalny’s lawyer, Vadim Kobzev, tweeted that the agency told the politician to show up at his office on Tuesday morning. Navalny, who said earlier that he planned to return to Russia as soon as he fully recovered, scoffed at the demand, saying that the Federal Prison Service’s reference to the Lancet article prompted the government to accept that he was poisoned.
“This means that the state has officially recognized the poisoning,” he tweeted. “And where is the criminal case, then?”
Navalny fell into a coma on a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow on August 20. The plane made an emergency landing and he was transferred from a hospital in Siberia to Berlin hospital two days later. Laboratories in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to a Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.
Russian authorities insisted that doctors who treated Navalny in Siberia before he was flown to Germany found no trace of poison and challenged German authorities to provide evidence of his poisoning. They refused to open a full criminal investigation, citing a lack of evidence that Navalny was poisoned.
The European Union imposed sanctions on six Russian officials and a state research institute after tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons concluded that Navalny had been exposed to Novichok. Russia responded with its own sanctions against EU officials.
Last week, Navalny released the recording of a phone call he said he made to a man he described as an alleged member of a group of Federal Security Service officers, or FSB, who allegedly poisoned him in August and then tried to cover . above.
Navalny made the call hours before the investigative group Bellingcat released a report alleging that FSB agents with specialized chemical weapons training had followed him for years and were nearby when he was poisoned.
On the call, Navalny introduced himself as a security officer and induced his interlocutor to share details of the alleged poisoning operation and to acknowledge that he was involved in the “processing” of Navalny’s underwear to “have no trace” of poison.
The FSB considered the recording released by Navalny to be false.