MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th August, 2020) Lawyers of Anti-Corruption Foundation, founded by Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny, who fell ill earlier on Thursday, have demanded the Investigative Committee to open a criminal case into attempted murder, one lawyer said.
Navalny was on a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow when he fell ill. The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Omsk, where Navalny was hospitalized and put on a ventilator in a medically induced coma. According to the deputy chief doctor of the hospital, Anatoly Kalinichenko, Navalny is in stable condition but still in intensive care. His spokeswoman believes that he has a toxic poisoning. The hospital said that this was just one of the possible reasons behind Navalny's illness.
"We contacted the Investigative Committee regarding the case of Navalny's poisoning. We demand the initiation of a criminal case on the fact of encroachment on the life of a public figure in order to terminate his political activities or out of revenge for such activities (Article 277) and attempted murder (Articles 30, 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation)," lawyer Vyacheslav Gimadi said in a tweet.
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier in the day that the Kremlin learned about the sudden illness of Navalny from the media and wished swift recovery for him. When asked if the Kremlin would help Navalny if he needed treatment abroad amid the coronavirus restrictions, the spokesman said that the authorities were prepared to consider any such request urgently.
