Alexei Navalny ‘likely poisoned,’ German government says

A German government spokesman said on Monday that it was likely that Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny was poisoned.

“The suspicion is… that somebody poisoned Mr Navalny — that somebody seriously poisoned Mr Navalny — which, unfortunately, there are some examples of in recent Russian history, so the world takes this suspicion very seriously,” Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters.

“Because there is a certain probability of a poison attack, protection is necessary,” he added.

Navalny, a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been in a coma for several days. The 44-year-old was transported to Berlin on Saturday via a German-operated flight to receive treatment at the city’s Charite hospital. Navalny’s allies have accused Russian doctors of delaying his evacuation to Germany.

Ongoing tests

Charite spokeswoman Manuela Zingl said Navalny would be undergoing extensive diagnostic tests and that doctors wouldn’t comment on his illness or treatment until they were able to evaluate the results.

Dirk Wiese, the German government’s coordinator for Eastern European affairs, told public broadcaster ZDF that police posted outside the hospital are there as a precaution, and that the cause of his illness has not yet been determined.

Read more: The German NGO behind Alexei Navalny’s rescue

• Berlin Charite: The storied history of the hospital treating Alexei Navalny

  Ranked Germany’s top hospital

  Berlin Charite was established in 1710 as a center for plague patients and 100 years later it grew to house a medical university. From then on, its campus has handled patients as well as research students. More than half of Germany’s Nobel Prize winners for medicine or physiology worked at the hospital.

• Berlin Charite: The storied history of the hospital treating Alexei Navalny

  Reputation damaged during Nazi era

  During the Nazi regime, many physicians from Charite were involved in ethical crimes related to medicine. The Charite hospital was also responsible for autopsies on Jewish suicide victims and the executed resistance fighters of July 20th. After the war, the hospital fell under the jurisdiction of the German Democratic Republic, as it was located in East Berlin.

• Berlin Charite: The storied history of the hospital treating Alexei Navalny

  Temporary Ebola hub

  Berlin Charite became a European care hub during the outbreak of the Ebola virus in Africa in 2015. A South Korean medic, who was working in Sierra Leone and became infected with the virus, was flown to Berlin for treatment. The patient was sent to Berlin at the request of the South Korean government, which said his anonymity would be better kept there.

• Berlin Charite: The storied history of the hospital treating Alexei Navalny

  Lead role in coronavirus crisis

  Charite was the first hospital to detect a locally transmitted coronavirus infection in Germany, back in March. Since then, it has gained prominence as Christian Drosten, director of Charite’s Institute of Virology, has played a public role in policy during the COVID-19 health crisis and been a scientific voice during the pandemic, through his many public appearances and weekly podcast.

• Berlin Charite: The storied history of the hospital treating Alexei Navalny

  Notable politician patients

  The hospital has attracted international attention by offering support to prominent international politicians. In March 2014, Ukrainian opposition politician and presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko was treated at Charite. She suffered a total of three slipped discs, which she had acquired during her two and a half years imprisonment.

• Berlin Charite: The storied history of the hospital treating Alexei Navalny

  Poisoned Russian activist

  In 2018, Pyotr Verzilov, an associate of the Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot and staunch Vladimir Putin critic was flown from Moscow to Berlin, after showing symptoms of poisoning. Charité head doctor Kai-Uwe Eckardt treated the activist. Verzilov’s case is said to have set the precedent for Alexei Navalny’s supporters to consider Berlin for his treatment.

• Berlin Charite: The storied history of the hospital treating Alexei Navalny

  Navalny the latest high-profile patient

  Vladimir Putin critic and prominent Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was flown to Charite Berlin from a hospital in Omsk, Russia, to be treated for suspected poisoning. The activist traveled on a chartered flight paid for by the NGO Cinema for Peace. Chancellor Angela Merkel was among those who pushed for a speedy transfer for Navalny to Germany.

  Author: Jenipher Camino Gonzalez

“The circumstances of what led to Alexei Navalny’s critical condition haven’t yet been clarified,” he said. “We expect full transparent and also cooperative clarification, especially from the Russian authorities. And before it is known how this happened, appropriate security precautions are necessary.”

Wiese said that Navalny’s condition was “currently critical, but stable.”

“He is now receiving the best possible treatment,” he added. Charite is expected to release an update later in the day. 

Russian doctors find ‘no trace’

Doctors at the Siberian hospital that treated Navalny said, however, that they had found no traces of poison in his system. 

“If we had found some kind of poison that was somehow confirmed then it would have been a lot easier for us,” said Anatoly Kalinichenko, a senior doctor at the hospital. “It would have been a clear diagnosis, a clear condition and a well-known course of treatment.” 

They also denied that they had received any outside pressure regarding his treatment. 

“We saved his life with great effort and work. There was no outside influence on the care for the patient and there couldn’t have been,” the head doctor at the hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk, Alexander Murakhovsky, said at a news conference. 

He was unconscious without any visible reasons for his condition, suggesting dozens of possible diagnoses, said Kalinichenko, according to state media. The doctors did not say specifically what they had done to save his life or what they had treated him for, but last week, they said they diagnosed him with metabolic disease possibly brought on by low blood sugar. 

The activist is one of Putin’s most vocal domestic critics and has organized several protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he accuses of supporting widespread corruption. 

• A history of political poisonings

  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.

• A history of political poisonings

  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.

• A history of political poisonings

  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.

• A history of political poisonings

  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.

• A history of political poisonings

  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.

• A history of political poisonings

  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.”

• A history of political poisonings

  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.

• A history of political poisonings

  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.

• A history of political poisonings

  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.

• A history of political poisonings

  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.

  Author: Louisa Wright, Nik Martin

lc/rt (dpa, Reuters, AFP)

Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/alexei-navalny-likely-poisoned-german-government-says/a-54675241?maca=en-rss-en-ger-1023-xml-atom