‘UNKNOWN ILLNESS’

Navalny Told Lawyer He Thought He Was Being Slowly Poisoned

“Listen, I’m afraid to seem paranoid, but it seems that they’re poisoning me here.”

Kremlin foe Alexei Navalny told a lawyer he thought he was being slowly poisoned in prison months before he died. His former lawyer, Olga Mikhailova, revealed the conversation in an interview with Meduza, noting that the fear Navalny had expressed to her in confidence back in April 2023 had come up in court the day before he died. That’s when authorities petitioned for Mikhailova herself to be locked up as part of a criminal case against her for “participating in an extremist community,” a charge that has been leveled against four lawyers representing Navalny. Mikhailova, who is no longer in Russia, said a wiretap of her speaking with Navalny last year while he was still at a penal colony in a central region of the country was presented in court. At that time, she said, when she went to visit him, he told her, “Listen, I’m afraid to seem paranoid, but it seems that they’re poisoning me here.” Mikhailova later made the allegation public by posting it on a Twitter account used by Navalny’s legal team, questioning the “unknown illness” he was suffering from that had required an ambulance and caused him to lose about 17 pounds in a period of around two weeks. His lawyers said at the time that the “strange situation” surrounding his health was causing a deterioration that hadn’t come about suddenly, but “steadily” and “gradually.”

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Allison QuinnNews Editor

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