The German government has said the Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny requires police protection because of a “certain likelihood” he was poisoned, a spokesman has said.
“Because one can assume with a certain likelihood that we are dealing with a poison attack, protection is essential,” Steffen Seibert, the spokesman for the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, told a press conference on Monday morning.
Security has been increased at the Charité hospital complex in Berlin where Navalny is being treated for a suspected poisoning after falling ill during a flight in Russia last week.
“The suspicion is not that Mr Navalny poisoned himself but that someone poisoned Mr Navalny, and there are unfortunately one or two examples of such poisonings in recent Russian history,” Seibert said.
The hospital said Navalny was undergoing extensive testing for poisoning and cautioned it would take some time for the results to be known.
His family and supporters have not revealed any results from the hospital tests, although an aide told the Guardian on Sunday Navalny was in stable condition and remained unconscious.
His evacuation to Germany on Saturday came after a direct plea from Navalny’s wife to Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, to allow his transfer abroad, as well as public concerns expressed by the leaders of Germany, France and Finland.
The German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, was cautious in his remarks about the case on Monday.
“I belong to those who base their assessments on facts,” Maas said on a visit to Kyiv. “In the Navalny case we are still lacking too many facts – medical but also criminological – and we will need to wait for those to emerge.”
The opposition leader was transported in an isolation pod often used for coronavirus patients due to concerns that whatever caused his sudden illness could place medical staff or the air crew at risk.
Supporters suspect he may have been targeted with poisoned tea before boarding a flight last week to Moscow and losing consciousness soon after takeoff.
On Monday, Kira Yarmysh, an aide to Navalny, said three days after filing a complaint with Tomsk police a criminal case had still not been opened for the suspected attack.
Doctors in the Siberian city of Omsk, where the flight made an emergency landing, have said they do not believe Navalny was poisoned. Navalny’s supporters say the doctors in Russia are under government pressure to cover up evidence of an attack.
At a press conference on Monday, Alexander Murakhovsky, the head doctor of Omsk’s emergency hospital No 1, said: “We treated that patient and we rescued him. There was no interference in the treatment of the patient and there could not be any.”
Navalny’s supporters also claimed he was under surveillance during his trip to Siberia. A newspaper article citing police sources detailed extensive government surveillance of Navalny before he fell ill.
According to the article, police identified the apartment where Navalny was staying by tracking a sushi delivery to an associate, collected his receipts from a local store, and even followed him during a short trip out of town for an evening swim in the Tom River.
On Monday, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, neither confirmed nor denied Navalny was being watched by the security services. “All I can do in this case is refer your question to the security services,” he told journalists.
“Clearly, operational and investigative activities in regard to particular individuals cannot and should not be coordinated with any agencies, especially the presidential administration. This is the prerogative of the security services. The only way to verify the credibility of this information is to ask them.”
source https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/24/alexei-navalny-was-probably-poisoned-says-germany
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