For the fourth time, the German Ministry of Justice responded with a refusal to the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia to provide information on the case of the alleged poisoning of blogger Alexei Navalny. This was announced on Monday, February 8, by the press service of the Russian Foreign Ministry with reference to the official representative of the department, Maria Zakharova.
It is noted that on September 28, 2020, the Prosecutor General’s Office sent a fourth request for legal assistance to the German Federal Office of Justice. It contained a request to establish the e-mail address from which, on the day of Navalny’s emergency hospitalization, messages were sent about the mining of social infrastructure in Omsk.
In addition, the Russian side requested confirmation or refutation of information published in open sources that the Novichok-class poison was found on a bottle brought to Germany from Tomsk by the blogger’s curator Maria Pevchikh.
Zakharova indicated that the German side refused to interview the Singers, since her address in Germany was allegedly unknown. At the same time, according to open sources, she met in Germany with Navalny and saw him off on the day of his flight from Berlin to Moscow.
“No data was provided on the results of a toxicological study of traces of poison, allegedly found on the bottles of mineral water, which M.K. Pevchikh took from a Tomsk hotel to Berlin. The FRG authorities also refused to provide any information about the experts who examined the bottles and refused to interview them, ”the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.
Blogger Alexei Navalny fell ill during the flight from Tomsk to Moscow, the plane was urgently landed in Omsk, and Navalny himself was hospitalized. After the Russian doctors stabilized the blogger’s condition, he was allowed to be taken to Germany for treatment.
In the Berlin clinic “Charite”, where Navalny was taken, they told about the discovery in the Russian of signs of intoxication with a substance from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors, without providing any evidence. Tests taken in Omsk showed the absence of such substances in the blogger’s body.
After being discharged to Moscow, the blogger returned on January 17. Navalny was brought to Berlin airport in a motorcade with flashing lights. He was taken not to the terminal, but immediately to the airfield. He did not appear in the airport building and at the check-in counters. German journalists said that the blogger did not even personally receive boarding passes; employees of the special services of Germany also went through the procedure for him.
On February 2, the Simonovsky Court of Moscow replaced Navalny’s suspended sentence in the fraud case against Yves Rocher with a real one of 3.5 years. The reason was multiple violations of the probationary period. So, in 2018, Navalny did not appear at the inspection 10 times, in 2019, 40 absenteeism were recorded, in 2020 – six. Taking into account the months spent under house arrest in a general regime colony, the blogger will serve two years and eight months.