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Russian doctors say no poison detected in jailed Kremlin critic
MOSCOW, July 31, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Doctors at a Russian state facility on
Wednesday said they had found no traces of poison in jailed opposition leader
Alexei Navalny, who was hospitalised at the weekend with suspicious symptoms.
Navalny’s personal physician said Monday his condition suggested “poisoning
by some unknown chemical substance” after he was rushed to a hospital from
jail, where he is being held over an unauthorised protest.
However Alexei Tokarev, head of the state Sklifosovsky Institute for
Emergency Care, which has a toxicology lab, said the lab ran Navalny’s
samples and “poisoning substances were not found,” according to Russian news
agencies.
Navalny was sent back to his jail cell Monday despite the protests of his
doctor, who said he could be at risk of coming into contact with a poison
again there.
The jailed politician — one of Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critics — said
the official explanation of his symptoms as an “allergy” did not make sense
as he had never suffered from any allergies.
Others in the Russian opposition voiced concern that it may have been an
attempt on Navalny’s life, the latest such case of an opposition figure
falling ill with unexplained symptoms.
Among them is Pyotr Verzilov, an activist with Russian protest punk band
Pussy Riot who experienced sudden loss of vision and disorientation in 2018
and recovered in Germany.
“When I was unconscious and dying in Sklifosovsky institute, doctors didn’t
find anything either. But two days later German doctors concluded that I was
poisoned,” he tweeted Wednesday.
Doctors at Berlin’s Charite hospital had said it was “highly probable” that
Verzilov had been poisoned.
Another survivor of poisoning was opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza,
who fell into a coma in 2015 and went abroad for treatment.
BSS/AFP/RY/20:30 hrs