Russian authorities on Friday launched a criminal probe into an ally of Kremlin foe Alexei Navalny after she tried to doorstep the apartment of a man that Navalny said took part in his poisoning.
Investigators accused Lyubov Sobol of trespassing “with the use of violence or a threat to use it,” after she rang the doorbell of the alleged agent from the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s main security agency.
The charges carry a maximum penalty of two years in prison.
Photo: AP
Sobol was initially taken in for questioning as a witness in the probe, but later on Friday, Navalny ally Ivan Zhdanov said that she became a suspect in the case.
“Lyubov Sobol is now officially a suspect in the criminal case, her status has changed,” Zhanov wrote on Twitter, adding that she was being taken into police custody for 48 hours.
Sobol’s lawyer, Vladimir Voronin, confirmed this information, without providing further details.
Russia’s Investigative Committee — which probes major crimes — said in a statement on Friday that Sobol and several others repeatedly tried to enter the “apartment of an elderly woman” in eastern Moscow, adding that they were wearing uniforms of the country’s consumer watchdog.
The statement said that Sobol tricked a delivery courier into letting her inside the apartment block and then forced her way into the woman’s flat when she opened the door.
Just after 7am on Friday, the 33-year-old opposition activist posted a video on Twitter from inside her apartment before going incommunicado.
In the video, her seven-year-old daughter can be heard crying as someone pounds on the front door, demanding that it be opened.
A separate CCTV image released by Navalny’s allies shows masked men in black uniforms — one carrying a crowbar — inside Sobol’s Moscow residential building.
Investigators confiscated Sobol’s tech devices and her daughter’s mobile phone, her associates said.
On Monday, Navalny said that he had tricked an alleged chemical weapons expert with the FSB named Konstantin Kudryavtsev into admitting that the domestic intelligence agency had sought to kill him this summer by placing poison in his underwear.
Later on Monday, Sobol went to the Moscow apartment where Kudryavtsev is believed to live.
She was detained by police at the scene and questioned for hours.
Sobol’s lawyer said that the probe was prompted by a complaint from Kudryavtsev’s mother-in-law.
Western governments say Navalny, 44, was poisoned with the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.
The FSB said that Navalny’s call with Kudryavtsev was “fake.”
The Kremlin has admitted that security agents have tailed Navalny, but denied any attempts to poison him.
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