(Berlin) An investigation has been opened in Germany after a Russian journalist and an activist who took part in a conference in Berlin reported health problems that could lead to suspicion of poisoning, the judicial police said Sunday in the weekly Welt am Sonntag.
“A file has been opened based on the information available,” a Berlin police spokesman told the weekly. The latter was not immediately reachable to respond to AFP.
The Russian investigative media Agentstvo published an investigation this week reporting on the health problems encountered by two participants in a meeting of Russian dissidents, on April 29 and 30, around the businessman who became an opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
One participant, presented as a journalist who had recently left Russia, experienced unspecified symptoms during the event and said they may have started earlier.
The media adds that the journalist went to the Berlin Charité hospital where the Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, victim of poisoning in August 2020, had been treated.
The second participant is Natalia Arno, director of the NGO Free Russia Foundation in the United States, where she has lived for ten years after having had to leave Russia.
Mme Arno was in Berlin at the end of April, from where she traveled to Prague. It was there, Agentstvo reports, that she experienced symptoms and also discovered that her hotel room had been opened.
Leaving the next day for the United States, she contacted a hospital there as well as the authorities. Mme Arno also posted on Facebook this week about experiencing problems, “sharp pain” and “numbness”, saying the first “strange symptoms” appeared before he arrived in Prague.
She adds that she still has symptoms but feels better.
In recent years, several poison attacks have been carried out abroad and in Russia against opponents of Russian power. Moscow denies any responsibility for its secret services.
In the case of Alexei Navalny, European laboratories have confirmed the use of a Novichok-type poison, developed by the USSR for military purposes.