The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that Russian authorities failed to adequately investigate the poisoning in 2020 of Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, thus violating his right to life and a proper investigation under the European Convention of Human Rights.
Navalny fell violently ill during a flight in Siberia in August 2020 and was then urgently flown to Germany where he was treated and survived what Western laboratories later established had been an attempted poisoning with a Novichok nerve agent.
The findings led the European Union to impose sanctions on six Russian officials and a state research institute.
Russian doctors claimed that tests performed in their laboratories before Navalny was flown to Germany had found no trace of a poisonous substance in his blood and refused to open a criminal investigation into the incident.
Navalny has blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for his poisoning. The Kremlin has denied any involvement.
The ECHR said in its June 6 ruling that it "found in particular that the inquiry conducted by the Russian authorities had not been open to scrutiny and had made no allowance for the victim’s right to participate in the proceedings."
The Russian authorities' measures "had not been capable of leading to the establishment of the relevant facts and the identification and, if appropriate, punishment of those responsible," the ruling said, adding, that "it therefore could not be considered adequate."
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Navalny recovered and voluntarily returned to Russia in 2021, where he was arrested upon arrival and sent to prison for charges that he and his supporters say are politically motivated.
"As evidence obtained with the assistance of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) indicated that Mr Navalniy had been poisoned with a chemical nerve agent from the [internationally banned] Novichok group, Russia, as a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention, had been under an obligation to open a criminal investigation into any activities breaching the prohibition of chemical weapons," the ECHR said in its ruling.
The EHCR ordered the Russian state to pay Navalny 40,000 euros ($42,800) in damages.
Putin in June last year signed a law under which Russia will not follow ECHR's rulings made after March 15, 2022.
However, since Russia was a member of the Court and the Council of Europe at the time of the alleged poisoning, the judgment must be enforced, an ECHR spokeswoman told Reuters.