Navalny ally is convicted of trespassing
A top associate of Russia’s imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny was convicted of trespassing Thursday and handed a suspended sentence of one year community service after she tried to gain entry into the apartment of an alleged security operative believed to be involved in Navalny’s poisoning with a Sovietera nerve agent.
A court in Moscow found Lyubov Sobol, a politician and a key figure in Navalny’s AntiCorruption Foundation, guilty of forcing her way into the apartment of a relative of the alleged operative whom Navalny had previously duped into revealing details of his supposed poisoning.
Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic, fell sick during an Aug. 20 flight in Russia and was flown to Berlin while still in a coma for treatment two days later. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to a Sovietera Novichok nerve agent.
The 44yearold politician has blamed the poisoning on the Kremlin, accusations Russian officials have rejected.
In December, while still convalescing in Germany, Navalny released a recording of a phone call he said he made to a man he identified as Konstantin
Kudryavtsev and described as an alleged member of a group of officers of the Federal Security Service, who purportedly poisoned him with Novichok and then tried to cover it up.
In the call, Navalny introduced himself as a security official and beguiled his interlocutor into sharing details of the alleged poisoning operation and acknowledging that he was involved in the “processing” of Navalny’s underwear so “there wouldn’t be any traces” of poison.