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European Commission Calls For Navalny's Release On Anniversary Of Near-Fatal Poisoning [1]

["Rfe Rl'S Russian Service"]

Date: 2022-08

European Commission High Representative Josep Borrell has criticized Russia over its treatment of imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei Navalny on the second anniversary of Navalny's near-fatal poisoning by a Soviet-era nerve agent and has called for his "immediate" release from custody.

In a statement posted on August 20, Borrell said the commission "continues to condemn in the strongest possible terms the attempt to assassinate" Navalny and calls on Russia to "abide by their commitments under the Chemical Weapons Convention."

Borrell's statement also expressed regret that Moscow has banned Navalny's organizations in Russia as "extremist" and over its "continuous persecution and imprisonment of Mr. Navalny and his team members."

The statement called for Navalny's immediate release from prison and for Moscow to fulfill its commitments under the European Convention on Human Rights.

In August 2020, Navalny fell violently ill while on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. After receiving emergency medical care in Omsk, he was medically evacuated to Germany, where experts determined he had been poisoned by a nerve agent of the Novichok group, the same type of poison that was used in the attempted assassination of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England, in 2018.

Navalny has said the poisoning was carried out by Federal Security Service (FSB) operatives acting at the behest of President Vladimir Putin.

Navalny was arrested immediately upon his return to Russia in January 2021. The next month, he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for an alleged parole violation during his convalescence abroad.

In March, Navalny was sentenced in a separate case to nine years in prison on embezzlement and contempt of court charges that he and his supporters reject as politically motivated.

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[1] Url: https://www.rferl.org/a/european-commission-calls-for-navalny-release-anniversary/31997021.html

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