2023-05-21 18:12:06
JOHN MACDOUGALL / AFP
Germany opened an investigation this Saturday, May 20 after suspicions of poisoning of two Russians during a meeting of dissidents in Berlin.
INTERNATIONAL – Were two opponents of Vladimir Putin poisoned in Berlin? Investigations are underway in Germany after Russian investigative media agency revealed that two women, one described as a journalist and the other as an activist in exile, fell ill following a meeting of dissidents in Berlin on April 29-30.
” An investigation has been opened “, declared this Saturday evening, May 20, a spokesperson for the Berlin police to AFP, confirming information from the daily The world. She was handed over to the State Protection Service, which is responsible for investigating terrorism and political crimes.
The first is presented by the Russian media as a journalist who recently left Russia. The second participant is Natalia Arno, director of the NGO Free Russia Foundation in the United States, where she has lived in exile for ten years after having had to leave Russia.
- What do the participants think happened?
The two women attended a meeting of Russian dissidents which discussed the fate of Russian businessman and opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
The journalist said she felt during the event of the pains, without knowing if they had occurred before the meeting. She then went to the Berlin Charité hospital where Russian opponent Alexei Navalny was treated in August 2020 after being poisoned with Novichok.
The second participant, Natalia Arno, describes her, in a message published on Facebook of “strange first symptoms” et “sharp pain” appeared during his trip to Berlin. The director of the NGO Free Russia Foundation says that she then went to Prague, in the Czech Republic, for a series of public meetings on Russia. It was after these meetings that her condition worsened.
Natalia Arno Arno also recounts having found, in Prague, the door of her hotel room open, and having felt “a strange pungent smell of cheap perfume”. Contacted by AFP, the Czech authorities simply declared during the week that they had ” no information “ on this case.
Back in the United States, the activist had to be medically taken care of. “There are suspicions that I was poisoned with a nerve agent (poisons that attack the nervous system, of which Novichok is a part, editor’s note) », she said when she left the hospital. Some symptoms still persist today, although she claims to feel ” better “.
- What are the previous notable cases of Novichok poisoning?
In recent years, several targeted attacks have been perpetrated abroad and in Russia against opponents of power, including Novichok. Moscow has always denied any responsibility of its secret services in the various cases.
Novichok poison was specifically developed by the USSR for military purposes. It is not one, but a hundred nerve gases, presented as the deadliest gases ever created. Novichok means ” newcomer “ in Russian and it lives up to its name: these substances were created in such a way that they are not affected by the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons signed in 1993 and entered into force in 1997.
In 2020, Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny, now imprisoned, was the victim of serious poisoning in Siberia, of which he accuses the Russian authorities. Two years earlier, former KGB agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter had already been poisoned with Novichok in the United Kingdom. In both cases, the Kremlin had denied involvement.
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