New evidence suggests poisoning signs in Navalny’s death: Report

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny showed signs of poisoning before his death in prison earlier this year, contradicting official reports which attributed his sudden death to natural causes, according to unpublished official documents leaked to the independent news portal The Insider on Monday, according to a report.

Navalny, widely seen as a political rival of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died in an Arctic prison in February.

The Russian government has been unconvincing in its explanations regarding the circumstances of Navalny’s demise, with his supporters accusing the Kremlin of orchestrating his death as officials offered selective accounts of the events surrounding it.

The Russian Investigative Committee that looked into the cause of Navalny’s death ultimately concluded that it was “not criminal in nature” and was due to “combined illnesses.”

But the documents obtained by The Insider suggest that references to Navalny’s symptoms were removed, the outlet said.

The Russian Investigative Committee that examined the circumstances of Navalny’s death ultimately determined that it was “not criminal in nature” and resulted from “combined illnesses.”

However, according to Politico report, citing documents obtained by The Insider, references to Navalny’s symptoms symptoms were omitted.

An earlier version of the documents, signed by Russian investigator Alexander Varapaev, recorded that Navalny had suffered symptoms that medical experts said were consistent with poisoning, added the report.

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“Convict AA Navalny lay down on the floor and began to complain of sharp pain in the abdominal area; he started reflexive ejection of his stomach contents, had convulsions, and lost consciousness, which was immediately reported to the medical staff of the correctional facility," Politico quoted from a document on the case that accompanied the investigative committee’s decision.

In a later final version of the document, however, all references to abdominal pain, vomiting and convulsions were removed, added the Politico report_,_ citing The Insider.

“It confirms that they (the Russian authorities) themselves consider that there was something there that they didn’t want to show,” Politico quoted Roman Dobrokhotov, chief editor of The Insider, as saying to the Russian-language ‘Breakfast Show’ broadcast on Monday.

“If those had been normal symptoms, then why wouldn’t they have left them in?” Dobrokhotov asked.

According to Politico, the Russian outlet also obtained an inventory of “seized objects” from the scene of Navalny’s death, including “samples of vomit,” which an earlier draft of the document indicated were submitted for analysis; however, the final version reported no mention of vomiting, according to Insider.

This was not the first poisoning attempt against Russia’s most prominent opposition figure. In August 2020, Navalny fell into a coma after being poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent in what his supporters claimed was a state-sponsored assassination attempt.

He survived, received treatment in Germany, and returned to Russia in 2021, where he was immediately arrested and remained imprisoned until his death.

With inputs from agencies