Russia govt dismisses Navalny's clothes' request

A spokesman for Russian president Vladimir Putin on Tuesday dismissed opposition leader Alexei Navalny's demand to get back the clothes the clothes he was wearing on the day he fell into a coma in Siberia.

"With all due respect to the patient (Alexei Navalny), we don't deal with clothes," Dmitry Peskov said, adding that was the job of law enforcement authorities.

Navalny demanded Monday that Russia return the clothes, calling it "a crucial piece of evidence" in the nerve agent poisoning he is being treated for at a German hospital. In a blog post, Navalny said the Novichok nerve agent was found "in and on" his body, and said the clothes taken off him when he was hospitalized in Siberia a month ago after collapsing on a Russian flight are "very important material evidence."

Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin's fiercest critic, fell ill on a domestic flight to Moscow on Aug. 20, was brought to a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk and was transferred to Germany for treatment two days later.A German military lab later determined that the Russian politician was poisoned with Novichok, the same class of Soviet-era nerve agent that Britain said was used in 2018 on a former Russian spy and his daughter in England.The Kremlin has repeatedly said they see no grounds for a criminal case, as Russian labs and the hospital in Omsk found no indications of poisoning. Other European labs have backed Germany's stance that Navalny was poisoned with independent tests of their own.

Germany’s conclusion that Navalny was poisoned has fueled tensions between Russia and the West. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Navalny’s poisoning an attempted murder, meant to silence Putin’s most prominent foe. Moscow has demanded that Germany provide its evidence and bristled at the urging of Merkel and other Western leaders to answer questions about what happened to Navalny.

Peskov on Tuesday said that Russian police faces difficulties in investigating what happened because Navalny's team took evidence to Germany, which hasn't shared the findings with Russia.

(Image Credits:Twitter/navalny)