Doctors: Poisoning of Russian ‘plausible’

BERLIN — It is “highly plausible” that a member of Russia’s Pussy Riot activist group was poisoned in Moscow last week, German doctors said Tuesday.

Doctors at Berlin’s Charite Hospital said the rapid onset of symptoms was consistent with a disruption of the nervous system, although they have not determined the substance involved.

“We have no indication whatsoever that an endogenous disease or infection, or some sort of metabolic disease can cause these types of symptoms,” hospital chairman Karl Max Einhäupl said. “And that’s why we have to assume that an external toxin, which we haven’t yet identified and maybe won’t identify, was introduced.”

Pyotr Verzilov, a 30-year-old Russian-Canadian citizen and prominent figure in Russia’s anti-Kremlin opposition movement, remains in intensive care, but is “no longer in life-threatening danger,” Einhäupl said.

Verzilov attended a friend’s court hearing in Moscow on Sept. 11, and soon after began losing vision, speech, mobility and then consciousness.

He received initial treatment in a Moscow intensive care unit and toxicology department, where Russian doctors said the symptoms were caused by a “pre-stroke condition,” according to Russia’s Interfax news agency.

But friends and family feared poisoning so, with the help of a nonprofit humanitarian group, flew him to Berlin.