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UN rights chief indulges in highly-likely style statements on Navalny - Russian diplomat

Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Geneva office stressed that the UN human rights commissioner is expected to be unbiased

GENEVA, September 8. /TASS/. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet’s statement on the incident with Russian opposition blogger Alexei Navalny is based on unverified information and is yet another highly-likely-style ungrounded allegation, Gennady Gatilov, Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Geneva office and other Geneva-based international organizations, told TASS on Tuesday, commenting on her call for an independent investigation of this "assassination attempt."

The Russian diplomat stressed that the UN human rights commissioner is expected to be unbiased. "Regrettably, but the high commissioner affords to make public statements that are based on unverified information. International officials must understand that they are responsible for what they say," he said.

"First, it is disturbing that the high commissioner (or her spokesperson) indulges in repeating highly-likely-style allegations and makes conclusions never bothering to check the facts or wait for concrete objective information," he said. "Fact finding is not yet over but the high commissioner uses such terms as ‘poisoning’ and ‘assassination attempt.’ Second, no one challenges the necessity of a thorough and unbiased investigation of the incident."

He drew attention to the fact that no reply has come from Germany to the inquiry of the Russian prosecutor general’s office and it "makes one think that certain circles are unwilling to conduct an objective and fair investigation."

"So, the question is: who is using such situations and, what is most important, what for? It looks like it is done to appoint those to blame beforehand and provoke a heat-of-the-moment reaction of those who can influence public opinion due to his or her authority or position," Gatilov noted.

Navalny felt sick on August 20 while flying from Tomsk to Moscow and the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk. The man was taken to hospital in a state of coma and was connected to a ventilator. He was airlifted to the Berlin-based Charite clinic in the morning on August 22. Its doctors said that indicators of poisoning had been found in his body.

Charite medics said on Monday Navalny had been taken out of the medically-induced coma and was being disconnected from the ventilator.

On August 2, the German government said that German military toxicologists had found that Navalny had been exposed to a nerve agent of the Novichok family. Following this, Berlin and its Western partners demanded Moscow clarify the circumstances of the incident and warned they would look at possible sanctions against Moscow.

The Russian side stresses that it is interested in a thorough investigation of the incident but has not yet received any reply from Germany to its inquiry. Apart from that, Moscow points to the fact that no toxic agent had been spotted in Navalny’s samples before he was taken to Germany whereas the latter has given no evidence to back its theory.