Earlier this year
Kara-Murza filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, seeking access to all documents held by the Federal Bureau of Investigation relating to his alleged poisonings. After six months, the Russian dissident sued the Department of Justice, arguing that the Department was in violation of law by withholding documents about his case. On August 10, the court handling Kara-Murza’s case received a notice from the Department of Justice, stating that 400 pages would be released within a month, and 1000 more pages by Oct. 15.
Department of Justice recently communicated with the court handling Kara-Murza’s lawsuit, to announce that it would be unable to release the remaining 1,100 pages by October 15. Instead, it said it would do so by November 15 instead. Kara-Murza’s lawyer, Stephen Rademaker, said his client will challenge the Department of Justice’s request. https://www.intelnews.org/2020/10/01/01-2880/
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10-26-2018 Kara-Murza, a 37-year-old veteran of Russia’s liberal opposition, says he believes both incidents were deliberate, retaliatory poisonings for his political activism, including his lobbying for the U.S. Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law that introduced sanctions for Russians deemed by Washington to be rights abusers….
In September, Russian opposition activist and publisher Peter Verzilov fell suddenly ill in Moscow. German doctors who treated him said it was "highly plausible" that he was poisoned. https://www.rferl.org/a/fbi-silent-on-lab-results-in-kremlin-foe-s-suspected-poisoning/29564152.html
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New details have emerged in the apparent poisoning of Russian activist Pyotr Verzilov, a member of the protest-art group Pussy Riot, and they may shed light on the deaths of three Russian journalists who were shot in the Central African Republic in July. Verzilov had apparently been working with the journalists before they travelled to Africa, and before he fell ill he’d been investigating their deaths, which the Russian government said had occurred as a result of a robbery.
Verzilov, who is thirty, fell ill on September 11th. In the course of several hours, he lost his eyesight and his ability to speak, became delirious, and lost consciousness. He was hospitalized in Moscow in critical condition. Four days later, after he had stabilized, Verzilov was flown to Berlin, where he is now being treated at Charité hospital. On Tuesday, members of his German medical team held a press conference, during which they confirmed that Verzilov had probably been poisoned. He is recovering but still hallucinating.
Also on Tuesday, one of Russia’s many quasi-anonymous, semi-underground online publications on the publishing and messaging platform Telegram—the contemporary version of samizdat—reported that Verzilov had been working on an investigative story about the deaths of the three Russian journalists, Alexander Rastorguev, Orkhan Dzhemal, and Kirill Radchenko. The three had been in the Central African Republic reporting on a mercenary force linked to a close associate (Prigozhin) of President Vladimir Putin. The suggestion that their deaths were connected to their investigative work surfaced as soon as they died, but the Russian Foreign Ministry slapped it down, branding a Dutch newspaper that mentioned the mercenaries “fake” news. In January 2018, less than two months before the Skripal poisoning, an unusual meeting took place in Washington. The directors of the three primary Russian intelligence agencies traveled to the U.S. capital for meetings with American counterparts including Mike Pompeo, then the director of the CIA. Kara-Murza’s mysterious illnesses were deemed important enough to U.S.-Russian relations to include on the agenda for the January 2018 meetings with the visiting Russian officials, according to the two former officials. The name of the person seeking the meeting (Jan. 25/26) with Wray is redacted in the e-mail, which came from the FBI’s Washington field office and included the subject line: “Kara-Murza Case Status.” It is unclear if the e-mail was related to the Russians’ visit to Washington. "The message (from Moscow) was: ‘If you’re serious about this, stop poking us in the eye and back off and have some restraint here," said the official, who spoke to RFE/RL on condition of anonymity. The Justice Department did not respond to the query about whether Wray met with the visiting Russians and if he did, whether Kara-Murza’s case was raised. https://www.rferl.org/a/rferl-exclusive-mystery-over-russian-suspected-poisoning-deepens-with-new-fbi-records/30856103.html
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8-20-20 The Russian opposition activist says he believes attempts were made to poison him in 2015 and 2017 in Moscow. A German laboratory later found elevated levels of mercury, copper, manganese and zinc in Kara-Murza, according to medical reports seen by Reuters. A French lab said "heavy metals"; Moscow denied involvement….
ALEXANDER PEREPILICHNY, 44-year-old Russian, was found dead near his luxury home on an exclusive gated estate outside London after he had been out jogging in November 2012. Perepilichny had sought refuge in Britain in 2009 after helping a Swiss investigation into a Russian money-laundering scheme. His sudden death raised suggestions he might have been murdered.
British police ruled out foul play despite suspicions he might have been murdered with a rare poison. An inquest into his death has yet to give a definitive conclusion as to how he died….A pre-inquest hearing heard that traces of a rare and deadly poison from the gelsemium plant had been found in his stomach….
VIKTOR YUSHCHENKO’s body was found to contain 1,000 times more dioxin than is normally present. His face and body were disfigured by the poisoning and he had dozens of operations in the aftermath.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-politics-navalny-mystery/factbox-kremlin-foes-who-have-suffered-mysterious-fates-idUSKBN25G0TN
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