Chemical weapons watchdog says Putin opponent was poisoned

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman says a global chemical weapons watchdog group has confirmed Germany and other countries’ findings that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was the victim of an attack with a Soviet-era nerve agent.

Steffen Seibert says in a statement Tuesday that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, had carried out its own analysis of samples taken from Navalny, and its members “agree with the results already from special laboratories in Germany, Sweden and France.”

“This once again confirms unequivocally that Alexei Navalny was the victim of an attack with a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group,” Seibert says.

Seibert says Germany received the OPCW’s report on Monday and was still examining it. Officials were still trying to determine how much of the information could be released to the public without causing a security risk by allowing knowledge of the substance to “fall into the wrong hands.”

— AP