Russian opposition politician and outspoken Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny, who died in prison in February, might have been poisoned, the Insider investigative group said, citing official documents that appear to have been edited to conform with the state's contention he died from cardiac issues.
According to a report by the Insider, published on September 29, the group obtained two variants of official documents on the decision not to launch a probe into Navalny's death in February in the remote Polar Wolf prison in the Arctic district of Yamalo-Nenets where he was serving a lengthy sentence on what he and his supporters said were politically motivated charges.
Both documents were issued on July 26, 2024, and the text in one, the Insider said, appears to have been amended and now complies with the official explanation for the anti-corruption crusader's death.
Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has said that her husband "in the last minutes of his life, complained of having a sharp pain in his stomach," while Navalny's associates have said he was killed in prison most likely on the Kremlin's command, which the Kremlin has vehemently denied.
One of the documents -- most likely to have been initially issued according to the Insider -- says that on February 16 Navalny "started complaining about sharp pains in his abdomen area, an impulsive rejection of his stomach's contents started, he began having convulsions and lost consciousness."
A second, apparently edited document, does not list the symptoms described in the initial document.
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The official autopsy report said that hypertension and other diseases caused a heartbeat disorder which led to Navalny's death.
"The official cause of death -- heart rhythm disturbance -- would not explain the symptoms we see in the (first) report: sharp abdominal pain, vomiting and convulsions. It is unlikely that such symptoms can be explained by anything other than poisoning," according to resuscitation specialist Aleksandr Polupan, who treated Navalny in an Omsk hospital after he was poisoned with a Novichok-style nerve agent in 2020.
"The short time interval between the abdominal pain and convulsions suggests that it could have been, for example, an organophosphorus substance (a class of substances that Novichok belongs to), but only if it was applied internally, not topically," he added, which other doctors from various medical specialties interviewed by The Insider agreed with.
In 2020, Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok-like nerve agent but survived after he was airlifted to Germany and treated there. Navalny accused President Vladimir Putin of ordering his poisoning then, but the Kremlin has denied that.
The Insider did not specify how and from whom its journalists had obtained the documents.
Russian officials have yet to comment on the report.
After Navalny's death, officials refused to hand the body over to his mother for more than a week, prompting accusations from his supporters that officials were trying to hide evidence of his murder.
SEE ALSO: 'We Wasted The Chances He Gave Us': Director Andrei Loshak Talks About His New Navalny FilmControversy has continued to swirl with Navalny's former associate Ivan Zhdanov saying on September 3 that the refusal by the prosecutor's office in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District to launch a probe into Navalny's death was illegal.
The district’s authorities said at the time of death that a probe had been launched, though there was never a report and no findings were released.
The Insider said "other facts" also support the use of a toxic substance in Navalny's death.
"The authorities did not release the body for a long time and did not allow an alternative examination of the biomaterials. However, only now has the fact of poisoning been documented," it said.