Navalny Foundation Lawyer Who Tried To Meet With FSB Agent Taken In For Questioning

Russian police raided the apartment of Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer for opposition politician Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, and took her in for questioning, Navalny’s fund said.

“Lyubov Sokol was taken for questioning to the Investigative Committee. The apartment is being searched,” the foundation said on Twitter on December 25.

Navalny’s supporters said they thought the police move was a response to Sobol’s attempt to meet an agent who has implicated the Federal Security Service (FSB) in the poisoning of the 44-year-old Kremlin critic.

Sobol was among journalists and political activists who tried to meet with Konstantin Kudryavtsev late in the evening on December 21, the day Navalny published an audio-recording of what appears to be a conversation with Kudryavtsev over the FSB’s role in the poisoning.

She was briefly detained at a police station.

Laboratory tests in three separate European countries, confirmed by the global chemical weapons watchdog, established that Navalny was poisoned with a Soviet-style Novichok nerve agent.

Russia has rejected calls for an investigation into the poisoning, and denies the involvement of state agents in the case, saying it has yet to be shown any evidence.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP