Navalny was 'poisoned' at hotel, not airport
Alexei Navalny's team said Thursday (September 17) that the nerve agent used to poison him was detected on an empty water bottle from his hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk,
suggesting he was poisoned there and not at the airport as previously thought.
This video posted on his Instagram account, shows members of his team searching his room at the Xander Hotel in Tomsk on August 20, after he fell sick in suspicious circumstances.
It also shows his team bagging several empty bottles of "Holy Spring" mineral water, among other items, while wearing protective gloves.
The post was captioned:
"It was decided to gather up everything that could even hypothetically be useful and hand it to the doctors in Germany. The fact that the case would not be investigated in Russia was quite obvious,"
"Two weeks later, a German laboratory found traces of Novichok precisely on the bottle of water from the Tomsk hotel room."
The Kremlin critic was airlifted to Berlin for treatment.
Germany says he was poisoned by Soviet-era chemical nerve agent Novichok.
But Russia says it has seen no evidence that he was poisoned.
Germany has now asked for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to investigate.
Experts from the agency say they have collected biomedical samples from Mr Navalny for analysis.
Their findings will be shared with Germany, which had until now requested that the agency keep its role in the case confidential.
Novichok falls under the agency's "Schedule 1" chemicals. A ban on the substance went into effect in early June.
