BERLIN, September 7./TASS/. Under German legislation, a new examination of Alexei Navalny is only possible upon the consent of his relatives, a representative from the German Medical Association told TASS on Monday when asked to comment on an appeal from the National Medical Chamber of the Russian Federation over the situation with the Russian blogger.

"The Medical Association is strongly concerned about the health of Alexei Navalny and supports the request from the German government to the Russian authorities as to the necessity of clarifying comprehensively the circumstances that led to this life-threatening illness," the source said. "Medical data on the Navalny case is available, and we are not questioning the quality of medical examination carried out by colleagues in Germany," he pointed out.

"Under the German legislation, only relatives can permit a new examination," the source said. The German Medical Association itself "cannot participate in the probe, since it is not an investigative agency, this is a matter for state agencies," he stressed.

Russia’s National Medical Chamber has urged Germany’s Medical Association to set up a joint group of experts to assess the condition of Russian blogger Alexei Navalny, said Leonid Roshal, who heads the chamber, when speaking to reporters on Saturday.

According to the veteran doctor, the National Medical Chamber expects that Russian toxicologists could discuss with their German counterparts whether Navalny has indications of poisoning, as Germany alleges.

Navalny’s poisoning saga

On September 2, the German government claimed that having examined Navalny’s test samples the Bundeswehr’s toxicologists had come to the conclusion that the opposition figure had been affected by a toxic agent belonging to the Novichok family. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia remained ready for any comprehensive cooperation with Germany. He pointed out that no poisonous substances had been detected in Navalny’s system prior to his transfer to Berlin.

The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that Moscow was still waiting for a reply from Germany to the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office’s request. The ministry’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said that the German Foreign Office had not provided the Russian ambassador with any proof of its version of the incident.

Navalny was rushed to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20 after becoming ill during his Tomsk-Moscow flight. He fell into a coma and was put on a ventilator in an intensive care unit. On August 22, he was airlifted to Berlin and admitted to the Charite hospital.