German police investigate suspected poisoning of Russian exiles
The investigation is being carried out by the State Security Unit, a specialized team that investigates cases related to ‘terrorism’.
German police say they are investigating the possible poisoning of two Russian exiles who attended a conference in Berlin last month hosted by Russian Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Berlin police told Reuters news agency on Sunday that “a file had been opened” after Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper, citing Russian investigative media group Agentstvo, said two women reported symptoms suggesting possible poisoning.
The investigation is being carried out by the state security unit, a specialized team that investigates cases related to “terrorism” or politically motivated crimes, a Berlin police spokesman told AFP news agency.
“An investigation has been opened. The investigation is ongoing,” he said, refusing to provide further details.
The Russian investigative media outlet Agentstvo published a report last week saying that two participants in an April 29-30 meeting of Russian dissidents in Berlin had health problems.
One participant, identified as a journalist who had recently left Russia, experienced unspecified symptoms during the event. They said the symptoms may have started earlier.
The report added that the journalist went to Charite University Hospital in Berlin – where Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny was treated after being poisoned in August 2020.
The second participant mentioned was Natalia Arno, director of the NGO Free Russia Foundation in the United States, where she has lived for 10 years since leaving Russia.
Arno had attended the rally of dissidents in Berlin before traveling to Prague, where she developed symptoms and found that her hotel room had been opened, Agentstvo reported.
She left for the US the next day and contacted a hospital and the authorities there.
Describing her problems – “sharp pain” and “numbness” – on Facebook this week, Arno said the first “strange symptoms” appeared before she arrived in Prague. She said she still had symptoms but felt better.
‘unclear tests’
The Agentstvo report also said former US ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, now senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, suffered poisoning symptoms a few months before Russia invaded Ukraine.
The Atlantic Council think tank confirmed that Herbst was showing symptoms in April 2021 that could indicate poisoning, but medical tests were inconclusive.
It added that it worked with US federal investigators who took a blood sample, but the lab results failed to detect toxic substances.
Herbst has since made a full recovery, it said.
In recent years, several poison attacks have been carried out abroad and in Russia against opponents of the Kremlin.
Moscow denies that its secret services were responsible.
But European laboratories confirmed that Navalny had been poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-made nerve agent.
The nerve agent was also used in a 2018 attempted murder of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury.
The Skripal case exacerbated already bad relations between London and Moscow since the 2006 death from radiation poisoning in the British capital of former spy Alexander Litvinenko.