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Coffee shop staff at alleged ‘toxic tea’ spot unaware of Navalny's suspected poisoning

A TASS source earlier said that Russia’s law enforcement agencies were not considering the version that Navalny may have been deliberately poisoned

© Evgeniy Sofiychuk/TASS

MOSCOW, August 20. /TASS/. Employees from the Tomsk cafe where blogger Alexei Navalny drank tea before flying to Moscow knew nothing about his suspected poisoning, a law enforcement source told TASS.

"The police interviewed the workers of the coffee shop, but they did not know anything about that. In addition, some of them even did not know anything about Alexei Navalny himself," the source emphasized.

Read also

Opposition figure Alexei Navalny hooked up to ventilator, unconscious, says spokeswoman

A TASS source earlier said that Russia’s law enforcement agencies were not considering the version that Navalny may have been deliberately poisoned.

When the opposition blogger was admitted to the hospital, the preliminary diagnosis was "acute poisoning with psychodysleptics," he noted. The source did not rule out that Navalny may have ingested something on his own.

In turn, the press service of the Russian Interior Ministry’s Transport Directorate in the Siberian Federal District reported that police were conducting a probe into the incident and ascertaining all the circumstances.

Earlier on Thursday, Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said that the plane carrying the Russian blogger made an emergency landing in Omsk after he suddenly felt under the weather in mid-flight. According to Yarmysh, Navalny only drank tea in the morning. She claimed that the blogger may have been poisoned.

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