Navalny under surveillance before falling ill: report
August 23, 2020
FSB officers were reportedly monitoring the movements of opposition politician Alexei Navalny leading up to his suspected poisoning. The Kremlin critic is being treated in Berlin after falling ill on a flight to Moscow.
Image: AFP/D. Dilkhoff
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Nemtsova on Navalny
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Prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who fell gravely ill in what his supporters say was a political poisoning was being closely watched by Russian authorities in the preceding days, according to a report by the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.
The Russian tabloid, citing unnamed security officials, said FSB officers followed Navalny and closely monitored his movements on CCTV during a trip to Siberia. The report provided a detailed account of where he and his team stayed, whom he spoke to and even what they ate during the trip.
Poisoning has been used by intelligence agencies for over a century and the latest alleged victim is Putin critic Alexei Navalny. Toxins and even nerve agents, hidden in food or drink, are often the weapons of choice.
Image: Imago Images/Itar-Tass/S. Fadeichev
Alexei Navalny
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was rushed to hospital in Siberia after being taken ill on a flight to Moscow. His aides allege he was poisoned in revenge for his campaigns against corruption. The 44-year-old ex-lawyer apparently only drank black tea before taking off from Omsk airport, which his team think was laced with a toxin that put him in a coma.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/K. Kudrayavtsev
Pyotr Verzilov
In 2018, Russian-Canadian activist Pyotr Verzilov was reported to be in a critical condition after allegedly being poisoned in Moscow. It happened shortly after he gave a TV interview criticizing Russia's legal system. Verzilov, the unofficial spokesman for the rock group Pussy Riot, was transferred to a hospital in Berlin where doctors said it was "highly probable" that he had been poisoned.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Tass/A. Novoderezhkin
Sergei Skripal
Sergei Skripal, a 66-year-old former Russian spy, was found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping center in the British city of Salisbury after he was exposed to what was later revealed to be the nerve agent Novichok. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the situation "tragic" but said, "We don't have information about what could be the cause" of the incident.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Tass
Kim Jong Nam
The estranged half-brother of Kim Jong Un was killed on February 13, 2018 at Kuala Lumpur airport after two women allegedly smeared the chemical nerve agent VX on his face. In February, a Malaysian court heard that Kim Jong Nam had been carrying a dozen vials of antidote for the deadly nerve agent VX in his backpack at the time of the poisoning.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/S. Kambayashi
Alexander Litvinenko
Former Russian spy Litvinenko had worked for the Federal Security Service (FSB) before he defected to Britain, where he became a journalist and wrote two books of accusations against the FSB and Putin. He became ill after meeting with two former KGB officers and died on November 23, 2006. A government inquiry found he was killed by radioactive polonium-210 which it alleged the men put in his tea.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Kaptilkin
Viktor Kalashnikov
In November 2010, doctors at Berlin's Charité hospital discovered high levels of mercury had been found in a Russian dissident couple working in Berlin. Kalashnikov, a freelance journalist and former KGB colonel, had 3.7 micrograms of mercury per litre of blood, while his wife had 56 micrograms. A safe level is 1-3 micrograms. Viktor reportedly told German magazine Focus that "Moscow poisoned us."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/RIA Novosti
Viktor Yushchenko
Ukrainian opposition leader Yushchenko became sick in September 2004 and was diagnosed with acute pancreatis caused by a viral infection and chemical substances. The illness resulted in facial disfigurement, with pockmarks, bloating and jaundice. Doctors said the changes to his face were from chloracne, which is a result of dioxin poisoning. Yushchenko claimed government agents poisoned him.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/M. Leodolter
Khaled Meshaal
On September 25, 1997, Israel's intelligence agency attempted to assassinate Hamas leader Meshaal, under orders from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Two agents sprayed a poisonous substance into Meshaal's ear as he walked into the Hamas offices in Amman, Jordan. The assassination attempt was unsuccessful and not long afterward the two Israeli agents were captured.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/A. Sazonov
Georgi Markov
In 1978, Bulgarian dissident Markov was waiting at a bus stop after a shift at the BBC when he felt a sharp jab in his thigh. He turned to see a man picking up an umbrella. A small bump appeared where he felt the jab and four days later he died. An autopsy found he'd been killed by a small pellet containing a 0.2-milligram dose of ricin. Many believe the poisoned dart was fired from the umbrella.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/epa/Stringer
Grigori Rasputin
On December 30, 1916, mystic and spiritual healer Rasputin arrived at Yusupov Palace in St Petersburg at the invitation Prince Felix Yusupov. There, Prince Yusupov offered Rasputin cakes laced with potassium cyanide but he just kept eating them. Yusupov then gave him wine in a cyanide-laced wine glasses, but still Rasputin continued to drink. With the poison failing, Rasputin was shot and killed.
Image: picture-alliance/ IMAGNO/Austrian Archives
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Airport or plane
The security officials claimed that given the level of surveillance Navalny was under, he could have only been poisoned at the airport or on the plane, the report said.
"The scale of surveillance does not surprise me at all. We were perfectly aware of it before," Navalny's spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote in a tweet containing the article. "What is surprising, however, is that [the security officials] did not shy away from describing it."
Navalny's wife and a top aide visited him Sunday at the Berlin Charite hospital where the comatose dissident is being treated by German doctors.
Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) told dpa that the politician is under police protection.
The hospital said it had begun "extensive" diagnostic tests on Navalny. A spokesperson said there would be no official comment on his status before Monday.
NGO: Navalny will survive 'poison attack'
Jaka Bizilj, founder of the Cinema for Peace Foundation, the NGO that organized the air ambulance to transport Navalny to Berlin, told German newspaper Bild that he expects the Kremlin critic to survive his ordeal.
"Navalny will survive the poison attack, but be incapacitated for months as a politician," Bizilj was quoted as saying by the tabloid.
Navalny's spokeswoman Yarmysh expressed surprise at Bizilj's comments, saying that noone had access to information about his condition at the moment.
"Alexei's family has not asked anyone to report anything to the press about his health," she wrote in the Telegram news channel early
Monday.
"At the moment there are no new details about Alexei's health. We ask everyone to be patient and not to react to untrue communications," she added.
Nemtsov's daughter speaks out
Navalny, an outspoken opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has long been in the focus of Russian authorities. He has been arrested multiple times for holding anti-Putin rallies without permission.
Zhanna Nemtsova, a friend of Navalny and daughter of the assassinated Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, told DW that she thinks the latest episode was a poisoning.
"In Russia, there are a lot of political prisoners. Putin's critics are followed. Some of them were killed. My father was killed just five hundred meters away from the Kremlin wall," she said.
When asked who had likely carried out the apparent poisoning, Nemtsova said: "I cannot answer this question, but I can say that Navalny is the most powerful opposition voice in Russia. I think that Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, at least holds political responsibility for his poisoning.
In 2018, Russia was forced to pay €50,000 in damages after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the several detentions of Navalny were politically motivated.