Swedish researchers have helped the German government with analyzes to establish that the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned by Novitjok.
– It is an unequivocal result, says Åsa Scott, head of department at FOI’s so-called CBRN laboratory in Umeå.
Today went the German government announced that it had received help from a Swedish and a French laboratory to establish that the Russian opposition leader was poisoned by Novitjok. The Swedish laboratory belongs to the Swedish Defense Research Agency and is located in Umeå.
– It is an unequivocal result. We have also redone the analyzes to really ensure that there is nothing wrong. You also make references to see that it can not be anything else, says department head Åsa Scott.
The Swedish Defense Research Agency CBRN Laboratory (Chemical, Biological, Radioactive and Nuclear Substances) is one of the International Organization for the Prohibition of Licensed Chemical Weapons Laboratories. The Umeå laboratory is one of the few in the world that has the opportunity to analyze and create reference substances of Novitjok.
That is why the request came to the Swedish lab, among other places.
Sealed blood samples from Alexei Navalny were sent on a plane from Germany to Umeå on Friday 4 September.
Then the analysis work began. All neurotoxins react with proteins in the blood and it is in the proteins that one can find the substance that has poisoned the person.
– Simply put, you try to “fish up” these proteins from the blood. Then the test is prepared to be able to run it with a special technology that is abbreviated LC-MSMS. A kind of spectroscopic method for analyzing a pattern. These patterns are unique, each subject has a special pattern, which makes it possible to say that in this case it was Novitjok, says Åsa Scott, head of department at FOI’s CBRN laboratory in Umeå.
Source: ICELAND NEWS