Russia’s federal prison has given the Kremlin’s top critic, Alexei Navalny, a day to show up at his office or be jailed.
MOSCOW – Russia’s federal prison service on Monday gave the Kremlin’s top critic Alexei Navalny a day to show up at his office or be jailed if he returns to Russia after the deadline.
Navalny is convalescing in Germany after his August poisoning with a nervous agent, who has blamed the Kremlin. Russian authorities have denied his involvement.
The Federal Penitentiary Service issued a statement on Monday saying 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 required Navalny to appear in his office in accordance with the terms of a 3-and-a-half-year suspended sentence he received for a 2014 sentence. If the term fails, he could be jailed, according to the communiqué.
Navalny’s lawyer, Vadim Kobzev, tweeted that the agency told the politician to show up at his office on Tuesday morning. Navalny, who previously said he planned to return to Russia once he fully recovered, mocked the lawsuit, saying the Federal Penitentiary Service’s reference to The Lancet’s article amounted to the government’s acceptance that he was poisoned. .
“This means the state has officially recognized the poisoning,” he tweeted. “And where is the criminal case?”
Navalny fell into a coma while aboard a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow on 20 August. The plane landed in an emergency and was taken from a hospital in Siberia to a hospital in Berlin 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 Novichok nerve agent from the Soviet era.
Russian authorities have insisted that doctors who treated Navalny in Siberia before transferring him to Germany found no trace of poison and have challenged German officials to provide evidence of his poisoning. They refused to open a full-fledged criminal investigation, alleging a lack of evidence indicating that Navalny was poisoned.
The European Union imposed sanctions on six Russian officials and a state research institute after evidence from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons concluded that Navalny had been exposed in Novichok. Russia has responded with its own sanctions against EU officials.
Last week, Navalny posted 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 (FSB) agents who allegedly has poisoned in August and then tried to cover it up. up.
Navalny made the call hours before the Bellingcat investigation group released a report alleging that FSB agents with chemical weapons training followed him for years and were close to the city when he was poisoned.
In the call, Navalny introduced himself as a security officer and tricked his interlocutor by sharing details of the alleged poisoning operation and acknowledging that he was involved in “processing” Navalny’s underwear so that “he would not be left behind. no trace “of poison.
The FSB dismissed the recording published by Navalny as false.