THE HAGUE, Netherlands: Germany and its allies at a meeting of the global chemical weapons watchdog Tuesday called on Russia to fully investigate and explain how opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent.
Navalny, a corruption investigator who is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic, was flown to Germany two days after falling ill on Aug. 20 during a domestic flight in Russia. German officials have said labs found traces of a chemical agent from the Novichok family in the Russian politician’s system.
“It is up to Russia — where the chemical attack occurred — to shed light on the incident, and to provide an explanation on how a chemical nerve agent came to be used in a reckless act against a Russian citizen on Russian soil,” German Ambassador Gudrun Lingner said in a statement to the Executive Council meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. “Up to now, the Russian Federation has not provided any credible explanation.”
The behind-closed-doors meeting, with attendance limited due to coronavirus restrictions, started Tuesday. Written statements by many of the national delegations taking part were posted online.
Lingner said that Russian responses so far to calls for clarification about Navalny’s poisoning “seek to obfuscate, to deflect responsibility and to distract from the main point — the use of a military-grade nerve agent.”
The United Kingdom, which accused Russia of using a Novichok nerve agent in a 2018 attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury, supported Germany’s demand for answers.
“It is less than three years since we saw first-hand the deadly consequences of Novichok used as a chemical weapon in the United Kingdom,” said Nicola Stewart, the UK’s deputy permanent representative to the OPCW. “We are appalled that there should have been a repeat anywhere in the world.”
Russia’s statement to the meeting was not immediately published online. Moscow has bristled at demands for an investigation, saying that Germany needs to share medical data in the case or compare notes with Russian doctors. Germany has noted that Russian doctors have their own samples from Navalny since he was in their care for 48 hours.
The OPCW said Monday Russia has asked the organization to consider sending technical staff to cooperate with Russian experts probing the Navalny case. Director-General Fernando Arias said he is ready to send experts but asked Russia first to clarify its request.
The US representative, Ambassador Joseph Manso, said the attack on the Skripals demonstrated that Russia still has a chemical weapons program in breach of the international convention banning such weapons.
“Russia’s contempt for the international norm against chemical weapons use must stop,” Manso said as he joined calls for Moscow to explain how Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent on Russian territory.
Germany and allies call for Russian answers on Navalny
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Germany and allies call for Russian answers on Navalny
- Ambassador Gudrun Lingner: It is up to Russia to provide an explanation on how a chemical nerve agent came to be used in a reckless act against a Russian citizen on Russian soil
- Lingner said that Russian responses so far seek to obfuscate, to deflect responsibility and to distract from the main point — the use of a military-grade nerve agent
US border agent shoots and wounds two people in Portland
- The Portland shooting unfolded Thursday afternoon as US Border Patrol agents were conducting a targeted vehicle stop, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement
A US immigration agent shot and wounded a man and a woman in Portland, Oregon, authorities said on Thursday, leading local officials to call for calm given public outrage over the ICE shooting death of a Minnesota woman a day earlier.
“We understand the heightened emotion and tension many are feeling in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis, but I am asking the community to remain calm as we work to learn more,” Portland police chief Bob Day said in a statement.
The Portland shooting unfolded Thursday afternoon as US Border Patrol agents were conducting a targeted vehicle stop, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
The statement said the driver, a suspected Venezuelan gang member, attempted to “weaponize” his vehicle and run over the agents. In response, DHS said, “an agent fired a defensive shot” and the driver and a passenger drove away.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the circumstances of the incident.
Portland police said that the shooting took place near a medical clinic in eastern Portland. Six minutes after arriving at the scene and determining federal agents were involved in the shooting, police were informed that two people with gunshot wounds — a man and a woman — were asking for help at a location about 2 miles (3 km) to the northeast of the medical clinic.
Police said they applied tourniquets to the man and woman, who were taken to a hospital. Their condition was unknown.
The shooting came just a day after a federal agent from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a separate agency within the Department of Homeland Security, fatally shot a 37-year-old mother of three in her car in Minneapolis.
That shooting has prompted two days of protests in Minneapolis. Officers from both ICE and Border Patrol have been deployed in cities across the United States as part of Republican President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
While the aggressive enforcement operations have been cheered by the president’s supporters, Democrats and civil rights activists have decried the posture as an unnecessary provocation.
US officials contend criminal suspects and anti-Trump activists have increasingly used their cars as weapons, though video evidence has sometimes contradicted their claims.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said in a statement his city was now grappling with violence at the hands of federal agents and that “we cannot sit by while constitutional protections erode and bloodshed mounts.”
He called on ICE to halt all its operations in the city until an investigation can be completed.
“Federal militarization undermines effective, community-based public safety, and it runs counter to the values that define our region,” Wilson said. “I will use every legal and legislative tool available to protect our residents’ civil and human rights.”
