Kamal Ghorui
Five European countries on Saturday said tests have confirmed that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a lethal toxin, accusing the Russian state of responsibility.In a joint statement, the foreign ministries of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said laboratory analysis of samples taken from Navalny detected epibatidine, a powerful toxin found in the skin of poison dart frogs native to South America and not naturally occurring in Russia, news agency AP reported.The countries said Russia had the “means, motive and opportunity” to administer the poison and announced they would report Moscow to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for an alleged breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention.British foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said Russia viewed Navalny as a threat, adding that the use of such a poison showed “the despicable tools it has at its disposal and the fear it has of political opposition.”Navalny, a leading critic of President Vladimir Putin who led mass anti-Kremlin protests and exposed official corruption, died in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024 while serving a 19-year sentence he said was politically motivated.His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said her husband’s murder was now a ‘science-proven fact’.Meanwhile, Russian authorities have maintained that Navalny fell ill after a walk and died of natural causes.Navalny had previously survived a 2020 poisoning with a nerve agent that he blamed on the Kremlin. After treatment in Germany, he returned to Russia five months later, was immediately arrested, and remained imprisoned until his death.
