(Washington Post) MOSCOW — Vladlen Los sat in a chair outside Room 239 of the Xander Hotel. It was midmorning on Aug. 20 in the Siberian city of Tomsk. The lawyer Los was determined that no one get inside the room that his colleague, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, had left hours before.
All that was known at that point was that Navalny was gravely ill — stricken on a plane returning to Moscow. But Los and a handful of other members of Navalny’s inner circle immediately suspected a deliberate poisoning.
And they decided some clues could still be in the hotel room. They also knew they had to be first to get inside. […]
Russian political analyst Kirill Rogov said the full details may never be known, but speculated that it was not an “accident.”
“From time to time, somebody is poisoned by groups close to the Russian government,” he said. “This is the system, an institution, not an accident.” […]
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