A group of more than one hundred MEPs has demanded this Friday in a joint letter that the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, promote an international investigation into the attack on the Russian opponent Alexei Navalni and propose to adopt community sanctions against those responsible.
In a letter promoted by the German ecologist Sergei Lagondisky, more than a hundred deputies from across the parliamentary arch condemn the assassination attempt against Navalni , after confirming the German government that the Russian opposition leader was poisoned with a toxic agent .
Although they are in favor of the request of several European governments and of community diplomacy itself to Russia to launch a full and transparent investigation of the attack, they remember that the Kremlin did not go to the end in clarifying the deaths of other dissidents such as Ana Politkovskaya or Boris Nemtsov, among others.
Photo provided by a scientist at the National Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology while working on the production of a new vaccine to fight COVID-19 in Moscow. EFE / Archive
The Russian vaccine against covid-19 is safe and generates antibodies, according to the scientific journal ‘The Lancet’
EFE
“We are extremely skeptical that the Russian authorities are prepared and have a real willingness to investigate the circumstances of this crime,” they said.
UN and Council of Europe investigation
For this reason, they demand Borrell to promote an international investigation within the United Nations and the Council of Europe, with the support of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
They understand that through these organizations, of which Russia is a part, it is the way to involve Moscow in an investigation with guarantees and thus ensure that it fulfills its commitments in the protection of fundamental human rights.
The leader of the Russian opposition, Alexei Navalny / REUTERS / Tatyana Makeyeva
Russian opponent Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent, according to the German government
EUROPE PRESS
Likewise, they ask that the EU react quickly and apply the sanctions mechanism for human rights violations. “In this way, we will be able to hold the people behind these attacks against opposition figures and journalists responsible,” they said in the letter.
“We cannot stand on the sidelines and watch while the opposition in Russia is systematically subjected to poisonings, ” summarized the group of MEPs.
The letter has been signed by a dozen Spanish MEPs. Among them are the ‘popular’ Leopoldo López Gil, Dolors Montserrat and Isabel Benjumea and the deputies for Ciudadanos Javier Nart and Adrián Vázquez Lázara. Likewise, it is signed by the Catalan independentists Antoni Comín , Clara Ponsatí and Carles Puigdemont , as well as Jordi Solé (ERC) and Ernest Urtasun (Catalunya en Comú).
