German police said on Sunday they had opened an investigation into suspected poisoning following health concerns raised by a Russian journalist and activist in exile.
“An investigation has been opened. The case is ongoing,” a Berlin police spokesman told AFP news agency, confirming information from the daily Die Welt published late Saturday.
The official gave no further details about the ongoing investigation.
The Russian magazine Agentstvo this week published a report in which it reports on the health problems reported by two participants in a meeting of Russian dissidents on April 29 and 30.
One participant, described as a journalist who had recently left Russia, had unspecified symptoms during the event and said it may have started earlier.
According to Agentstvo, the journalist went to Berlin’s Charité Hospital, where Russian Alexei Navalny, a poisoning victim in August 2020, had been treated.
The second participant is Natalia Arno, director of the Non-Governmental Organization Free Russia Foundation, in the United States, where she lived for 10 years after leaving Russia.
Also according to the report, Arno was in Berlin at the end of April, from where he traveled on to Prague.
There, Agentstvo reports, he developed symptoms and also discovered that his hotel room had been opened.
Arno posted a message on the social network Facebook this week, mentioning the problems he felt, namely “sharp pain” and “numbness”, and said that the first “strange symptoms” appeared before he arrived in Prague.
In recent years, there have been several poison attacks against Russian opponents abroad and in Russia.
Moscow denies any responsibility for its secret services.
In the case of Alexei Navalny, European laboratories confirmed the use of a poison called ‘Novichok’ developed by the USSR for military purposes.
Source: DN
