The relatives of Alexeï Navalny affirmed, Thursday, September 17, that the traces of the innervating agent which poisoned him were found at his hotel on a plastic water bottle.

The 44-year-old lawyer, whose condition has improved and who intends to return to Russia, was uneasy on August 20 during a flight bringing him back to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk, where he had come to support candidates in municipal elections and run an investigation into the corruption of local elites.

On Instagram, his team claimed that traces of the Novichok-type nerve substance, identified by a German laboratory, had been found on an "ordinary plastic water bottle" collected from Alexey Navalny's hotel room in Tomsk by his supporters, in the minutes following the announcement that the opponent had felt bad.

She specifies that the agent was identified "two weeks later", the bottle of water then becoming the evidence allowing to conclude to a poisoning with Novichok.

The discovery means that "Navalny was poisoned before he left the hotel, and not at the airport or on the plane," opponent's spokeswoman Kira Iarmych said in a video. that the first suspicions were directed towards a tea drunk at Tomsk airport.

First hospitalized in Omsk, another city in Siberia, Alexeï Navalny was transferred 48 hours after his poisoning to the Charité hospital in Berlin.

He came out of a coma last week and is gradually recovering.

A German military laboratory concluded on September 3 that it was poisoned by a substance of the Novichok type, designed for military purposes during the Soviet era, which Moscow refutes.

French and Swedish laboratories have confirmed the German conclusions.       

A hotel room scrutinized

During his stay in Tomsk, Alexeï Navalny had stayed three days at the Xander Hotel, a four-star establishment which he had also frequented the restaurant, according to the police.

Video accompanying Navalny's team message shows his supporters sifting through his hotel room and packing possible clues before police can visit the scene.

"As it was absolutely clear that Navalny was not 'slightly ill' (...), we had decided to collect anything that could be useful and pass it on to doctors in Germany", explain his supporters in a statement, adding that it was "obvious that there would be no investigation in Russia".

A close ally of the opponent, Lioubov Sobol, said on Twitter that it was "important to understand that there were traces of Novichok on the bottle, but that does not mean he was poisoned by this bottle of water ".

The victim was able to transfer them to the container.     

A hotel room filmed

Proekt.media, a Russian news site, published a detailed investigation on Thursday citing several relatives of the opponent saying that the poison was no longer detectable in his body when his transfer to Berlin took place.

According to the site, Alexeï Navalny can no longer remember when exactly he drank this bottle of Svyatoy Istochnik ("Holy Source"), a very popular Russian brand.

One of the inventors of the innervating agent, Vladimir Ouglev, assured Proekt.media that any ingestion of the poison would likely have been fatal.

The site adds that the door to Navalny's room was being filmed by two CCTV cameras, the images of which were recovered by the transport police, who launched preliminary checks. 

But despite sufficient evidence, "a criminal investigation has still not been opened", denounces Kira Iarmych.

The Navalny affair provoked a new pass of arms between Russia and Western countries: the European Parliament demanded severe sanctions against Russia, denouncing "a systemic effort to silence it".

This request is "obviously anti-Russian", replied the spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova.

With AFP

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