German doctors: Pussy Riot poisoning ‘highly plausible’
BERLIN — Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland says she is taking a personal interest in the possible poisoning of a Canadian member of the Russian protest group Pussy Riot.
German doctors treating Pyotr Verzilov of the group Pussy Riot said Tuesday that claims he was poisoned are “highly plausible,” but stressed they can’t say how this might have occurred or who was responsible.
Verzilov, who also has Canadian citizenship, has been receiving intensive care since arriving in Berlin from Moscow on Saturday, but his condition isn’t life threatening, Dr. Kai-Uwe Eckardt of Berlin’s Charite hospital told reporters.
Verzilov’s symptoms, together with information received from relatives and the Moscow hospital he was admitted to last week, “make it highly plausible that a poisoning took place,” Eckardt said. He said Charite doctors have found “no evidence whatsoever that there would be another explanation for his condition.”
Freeland said Tuesday that she spoke with Verzilov's mother on Friday and assured his family he will have the government's full support because he is a Canadian citizen.
“Pyotr’s situation is one that our government is following with very close interest and it is one that I am personally very closely engaged in,” she said Tuesday. “This is something we are monitoring very closely and we will act appropriately.”
Verzilov and other members of the Pussy Riot group served 15-day jail sentences for disrupting the World Cup final in Moscow in July to protest excessive Russian police powers.
Eckardt said Verzilov fell ill on Sept. 11 after attending a friend’s court hearing in the Russian capital, and was admitted to a Moscow hospital that evening with symptoms that included disorientation and widened pupils. Russian doctors suspected possible poisoning and treated him accordingly, emptying his stomach and performing a dialysis, Eckardt said.
He said the symptoms indicate Verzilov, who arrived in Germany by private medevac Saturday, is suffering from an anticholinergic syndrome that can result from the disruption of the nervous system that regulates the inner organs.
While doctors in Berlin haven’t yet determined what was responsible for the poisoning, they said it could have resulted from various substances including high doses of some pharmaceuticals and plants that contain particular toxins.
Dr. Karl Max Einhaeupl, the Charite hospital’s chairman, said doctors wanted to “refrain completely from all speculation .... ” He wouldn’t rule out recreational drugs were responsible for the poisoning, but said such drug use is very rare.