Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was due to speak on Tuesday 19 January at a hearing organised by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe as part of a report on his poisoning in August. Arrested as soon as he arrived in Moscow last Sunday, he was not allowed to do so by the Russian authorities, who, for their part, refused to participate in this online event and to express their point of view as they had been invited to do. The Assembly’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, led by French rapporteur Jacques Maire (ALDE), heard from Leonid Volkov, the dissident’s right-hand man, and Christo Grozev, the journalist in charge of the case for the Dutch-based online investigative website “Bellingcat”.
The Russian authorities’ refusal to conduct an investigation into the poisoning and to collaborate with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) justifies the Council of Europe taking up this case, Mr Maire said. He also pointed out that Mr Navalny’s arrest was a trampling on the 2018 ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, which considered that the repeated prosecutions of the opponent had a “political motive”.
The committee agreed to a trip to Russia by Mr Maire to continue the investigation begun in November. It remains to be seen whether Moscow will allow it, it was pointed out.
“Navalny’s crime is to have dared to survive”, because “when it works, the Novichok poison is undetectable”, said Mr Volkov. “Today, Alexei is in the hands of those who poisoned him” and “the responsibility of supporting him is shared between the European community and the Russians, who are responsible for defending their rights in the streets”.
Mr Grozev, for his part, reminded the members of the Commission of the ins and outs of an investigation into the use of Novichok in Russia, which started three years before Mr Navalny was poisoned. He pointed to the “Signal” centre in Moscow, “responsible for the development of chemical weapons under the cover of a civilian activity: the production of energy drinks”.
“We have identified three fatal poisonings, and we will publish a survey in the coming days”, he said. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)