The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia violated the rights of politician Alexei Navalny by refusing to investigate his Novichok poisoning. The corresponding decision is published on the website of the ECtHR.
The court decided that Russia should pay Navalny 40,000 euros as compensation for non-pecuniary damage. As stated in the text of the decision, there has been a violation of article 2 of the Convention on Human Rights — this article protects the right to life.
“The applicant complained about the refusal of the Russian authorities to institute criminal proceedings in connection with the attempted murder of him. He claimed that he had been poisoned with a chemical that only the state security services had access to, and complained that the Russian authorities had not carried out an effective investigation,” the ECtHR ruling says,
In August 2020, during the flight from Tomsk to Moscow, Navalny became ill on board the plane, after which he was urgently hospitalized in Omsk. A few days later, the oppositionist was taken to Germany for treatment — local doctors reported that the politician had been poisoned with Novichok.
Later, Navalny's associates demanded an investigation into what had happened, but the security forces refused several times to initiate a case of an attempt on the life of an oppositionist. At first, they also did not issue an official decision to refuse to initiate proceedings within the time period established by law. Navalny's lawyers tried to challenge the inaction of law enforcement agencies in the courts, but the judges took the side of the security forces.