Russian President Vladimir Putin’s critic Alexei Navalny was likely killed by a single punch to the heart, an execution technique that Soviet spy agency Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) used to use to eliminate its targets, a prison official from the IK-7 penal colony told Russian exile and human rights campaigner Vladimir Osechkin and the UK-based newspaper, The Times.
The report by The Times said that the bruising found on Navalny’s body is consistent with the ‘one-punch’ execution method citing Russian exile and human rights campaigner Vladimir Osechkin.
“It is an old method of the KGB’s special forces divisions. They trained their operatives to kill a man with one punch in the heart, in the centre of the body. It was a hallmark of the KGB,” Osechkin was quoted as saying by The Times.
Osechkin also pointed out that the presence of Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii (FSB) officers in remote Arctic penal colony jail.
“From what I know from my sources, it was a special operation that had been prepared several days in advance. It was a command from Moscow because without Moscow it would not have been possible to dismantle the cameras in the way that they did,” Osechkin said.
Osechkin also cast doubts on the claims brought forward by Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya that Navalny was possibly poisoned using Novichok. He said that authorities could have killed him in whichever way they deemed fine but would have ensured to not “leave a trace in his body that would lead directly back to Putin”.
Osechkin also claimed that Navalny may have been forced to spend between two and a half to four hours in an open-air solitary confinement space where temperatures could dip to (-27°C) the day before his death.
“I think that they first destroyed his body by keeping him out in the cold for a long time and slowing the blood circulation down to a minimum. And then it becomes very easy to kill someone, within seconds, if the operative has some experience in this,” Osechkin was quoted as saying by The Times.
The single punch technique is a stealth assassination technique of the KGB’s special forces to avoid leaving any indication of cause of death.
Authorities in Russia have failed to give a reasonable explanation regarding what led to the death of Alexei Navalny. They claim the 47-year-old died after taking a walk and feeling unwell and later said that the cause of the death was a blood clot.
Navalny’s family said they cannot have access to his body for another two weeks.
Comments
0 comment