German police investigate possible poisoning of Russian dissidents

2023-05-21 14:55:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

German police investigate possible poisoning of Russian dissidents

Illustrative photo

German police on May 21 launched an investigation into the possible poisoning of Russian dissidents in Berlin after a journalist and activist reported health problems following a meeting of dissidents in the German capital in April, German police said, AFP reports.

"The investigation is ongoing," a Berlin police spokesman told AFP, confirming the report by German newspaper Die Welt.

After a meeting of Russian dissidents in Berlin on April 29 and 30, two participants developed health problems, a Russian investigative media agency reported this week.

The meeting was organized by exiled former oligarch and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

One of the participants, a journalist who recently left Russia, experienced unspecified symptoms during the event and said they may have started earlier.

He had to be treated at the Charite University Hospital in Berlin, where Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was also treated for poisoning, in August 2020, AFP reports.

Another participant, Natalia Arno, director of the non-governmental organization Free Russia Foundation in the US, felt symptoms when she traveled to Prague after the meeting in Berlin.

She also discovered her hotel room was unlocked, the agency reported. The next day, she traveled to the United States, where she has been living for the past ten years. There, she turned to the hospital and competent authorities for help.

This week, on Facebook, Arno described the symptoms, severe pain and numbness. She wrote that the first strange symptoms appeared even before she arrived in Prague and added that she feels better, but that these symptoms have not completely disappeared.

In recent years, some opponents of the Kremlin have been poisoned abroad, but also in Russia. Moscow denies that its secret services are responsible for anything like this. Meanwhile, European laboratories have confirmed that Navalny was poisoned with the Soviet poison Novichok./ Rel