The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday ordered Russia to pay 40,000 euros to Alexei Navalny for the “lack of an effective investigation” into that opponent’s 2020 poisoning case.
The judges who decided on the payment of 40,000 euros condemned Vladimir Putin’s regime for “moral damage” suffered by Navalny.
Russia was excluded from the European Court of Human Rights last September after invading Ukraine, but the court can still be called upon to rule on Moscow for acts committed before 2022.
The Court, the judicial body of the 46 member states of the Council of Europe, applies the European Convention on Human Rights.
In the verdict, the seven judges unanimously ruled “that there was indeed a grave and imminent danger to Navalny’s life in suspicious circumstances”, obliging the Russian state to investigate the facts.
In August 2020, the Russian opponent was poisoned with a toxic substance manufactured during the Soviet era (novitchok) “before falling into a coma,” the court recalled.
Tests conducted in Russia concluded that no toxins were found in Navalny’s body, which was eventually transferred to Germany, where he was treated.
German doctors “undoubtedly” discovered the toxic substance manufactured by the former Soviet Union for military purposes.
The same conclusion was confirmed by laboratories in France and Sweden.
Novichok is a prohibited substance (weapon) under the Chemical Weapons Convention, the court noted.
Under these circumstances, Moscow was obliged to “open a criminal investigation into any activity in violation of the ban on chemical weapons”.
While the court did not accuse Russian secret services of being responsible for the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, the court emphasized that “the development and use of these chemicals require time, skills and a level of organization that individuals without government ties can hardly reaches”. .
The court in Strasbourg, France, said Navalny “is a figure of the political opposition, whose activism, namely in the fight against corruption, has on several occasions resulted in arrest, detention, criminal conviction and assault, and (. ..) who had reason to claim that he was being persecuted for political reasons”.
Alexei Navalny, 47, is in prison after saying last Sunday that he is “in a good mood despite the conditions in which he is being held,” according to non-governmental organization OVD-Info.
He will soon face trial in Russia on charges of extremism, where he could face up to 35 years in prison.
He has been imprisoned since January 2021, the day he returned to Russia, and believes the new trial is a way for the regime to keep him imprisoned for “life”.
In March 2021, Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison on fraud charges that he claimed were trumped up.
Source: DN
