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Germany explains time discrepancies in OPCW report on Navalny as mistake in date

German Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Rainer Breul stressed that the the first version was a draft report and the mistake was corrected in the second version of it

Alexey Navalny Vladimir Gerdo/TASS

Alexey Navalny

© Vladimir Gerdo/TASS

BERLIN, July 14. /TASS/. Time discrepancies in the draft report of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in the part related to the alleged poisoning of blogger Alexey Navalny were caused by a mistake in the date, that was corrected in the second version, German Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Rainer Breul said at a briefing on Wednesday.

"In the first draft there was, indeed, a mistake in the date, as it referred to August 20 as the date of Germany’s request instead of the correct September 4. The Secretariat saw this mistake and corrected it in the second version so that there would be no misunderstandings," he argued.

According to Breul, the first version was a draft.

"I can refute right now [the allegation] that at the alleged request of a single member state the OPCW can deploy a mission. It has nothing to do with facts," Breul said.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said earlier that the OPCW draft report had revealed fatal inconsistencies for the version of events claiming Navalny was poisoned, which the Technical Secretariat was unable to explain to Moscow. The document indicated that the OPCW Technical Secretariat had deployed a mission for technical assistance related to the suspected "poisoning of a Russian citizen" at Germany’s request on August 20, 2020 - the day of the Navalny incident. The diplomat emphasized that the drafting of Germany’s request to the OPCW had to take a considerable amount of time, as that could not have happened immediately.

Alexey Navalny was rushed to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20, 2020, after collapsing on a Moscow-bound flight from Tomsk. 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. On September 2, the German government claimed that the blogger had been affected by a toxic agent belonging to the Novichok family. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov pointed out that no poisonous substances had been detected in Navalny’s system prior to his transfer to Berlin.

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