Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in prison two years ago, was murdered by the Russian state with a "rare toxin," the governments of Germany, France, Great Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands said in a joint statement on the sidelines of the Munich Conference.
"We know that the Russian state used this lethal toxin to target Navalny, fearing his opposition," the British Foreign Office stated. London has reported Moscow to the global chemical weapons watchdog.
Navalny was poisoned with a neurotoxin found in Ecuadorian poison dart frogs and classified as a chemical weapon , the five European countries, which worked together to reach the conclusions, said.
"Laboratory tests prove that my husband was poisoned in a Russian prison," said Yulia Navalnaya , also present in Monaco. British scientists at Porton Down are believed to have played a key role in uncovering the frog poison plot, Sky News reports.
The "barbaric" act could only have been carried out by Vladimir Putin's government, they added, announcing that they will submit the results of their research to the United Nations chemical weapons watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
It's unclear how the frog venom—called epibatidine—was administered to Navalny, who was in a penal colony in Siberia at the time of his death. Russian authorities said at the time that the dissident's death was not suspicious, but was caused by "combined diseases," including an irregular heartbeat.
(Unioneonline)
