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Philipp Jacoby, the only German doctor treating Alexei Navalny for alleged poisoning to have testified publicly, has given a new press interview to alter the interpretation of the evidence he gave last week. "People close to Navalny", he now says, "warned me about John Helmer".

In two telephone interviews on September 6, Jacoby revealed that the planning of his medical evacuation flight to Russia began in Shannon, Ireland, on August 19, 2020, the day before Navalny fell ill on a flight between Tomsk and Moscow on the morning of August 20, 2020.

Jacoby also testified that Maria Pevchikh, one of Navalny's staff, had been the first to mention Novichok when they were talking together at the intensive care unit of Omsk Emergency Hospital Number 1, where Navalny was being treated, after his flight had been diverted for an emergency landing at Omsk. Later, Jacoby added, Pevchikh and Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny's wife, had asked him — and he had agreed with them — to conceal their backpack containing water bottles from Navalny's hotel room in Tomsk on to the German medevac aircraft, making it appear to be his own luggage and thereby avoid Russian detection at Omsk airport.

In a fresh interview for almost ninety minutes on Thursday evening, September 9, conducted in German, Jacoby did not claim his earlier interviews had been misquoted or misinterpreted. Instead, he revealed how close he has been to Navalnaya, corresponding by email with her after Navalny arrived in Germany for treatment.

Jacoby also issued the first personal attack by a German doctor or German government official on the medical expertise and truthfulness of the Russian doctors treating Navalny at Omsk. "The doctors in Omsk told us a cock and bull story [die Ärzte in Omsk haben mir einen Bären aufgebunden]," Jacoby now says, claiming they didn't tell him the full truth. He adds that handwritten records of Navalny's clinical tests he was shown by the Omsk hospital doctors "were unprofessional and could easily have been faked." Jacoby did not acknowledge the papers he was shown were handwritten in English because the Omsk Hospital doctors believed Jacoby could not understand computer printouts in Russian.

On the evidence of the German clinical test records, published last December by Jacoby with thirteen of the treating doctors at the Charité hospital in Berlin, Jacoby confirms that lithium and several benzodiazepine drugs were found in Navalny's blood and urine. In his first interview, Jacoby said he "had no idea where the lithium or benzodiazepines came from. Maybe he took it on a daily basis."

In his new interview Jacoby said "either he took it regularly himself or the doctors in Omsk gave it to him to distract from the poisoning."

Jacoby agreed by email to talk about his involvement in the Navalny case on the telephone. His first interview, conducted in English last Monday afternoon, September 6, ran for 27 minutes 43 seconds; seven hours later on the same day, his second interview lasted 14 minutes 31 seconds. For the record of Jacoby's remarks, click to read.

After the first report of his evidence was published on Tuesday, September 7, Jacoby was asked by email: "In the event that you believe you have been misquoted or misinterpreted, or you detect errors of evidence, please let me know." He did not reply. In his third interview two days later, he confirmed he had read the article, but did not comment on it.

Jacoby said last week he has eight years of experience as a doctor; his Facebook page says he graduated from the medical faculty at the University of Heidelberg in 2015.

In his latest interview, Jacoby reveals he has been questioned as a material witness in the Navalny case by the European Commission on Human Rights, and by Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA). The BKA also asked him about Pevchikh's water bottles. Later, the German government responded to questions from members of parliament, claiming they do not know how the water bottles got to Germany and they do not know a person named Maria Pevchikh.

Jacoby says that on August 20, 2020, when he was first briefed on the Navalny medevac mission at his aircraft base in Nuremberg, before takeoff to Omsk, he was told Navalny had been poisoned. "Yes, that was assumed from the start," Jacoby now claims.

In a discussion of Navalny's symptoms as he witnessed them in Omsk in his earlier interview, Jacoby admitted he and the two German paramedics with him were carrying only 6 milligrams of atropine, the standard antidote used for treating overdose and poison cases. He also said that from Omsk he had telephoned the Charité hospital in Berlin to discuss whether he should administer this atropine on the flight back to Berlin. He was told not to do that, he said. According Jacoby, he was told that for a poisoning case 750 mgs would be required.

Dr. Alexander Sabayev, the chief toxicologist at the Omsk Hospital, has revealed in a Russian interview that Navalny was given 1 mg of atropine when an intubation tube was inserted into his trachea. Sabayev confirmed that he received 2 additional doses of 1 mg each, for a total of 3 mg of atropine. Jacoby is critical of the Omsk doctors. "Administration of atropine for intubation is an outdated practice that is unusual in the west. But it could be that the atropine was given to increase the heart rate. Atropine is used to accelerate the heart rate, to reduce perspiration and to reduce saliva production." Jacoby believes these were the reasons the Omsk doctors gave atropine.

Jacoby was asked why he had not given Navalny atropine on the flight to Berlin. He could have asked the doctors in Omsk for a sufficient amount. He replied that the doctors at the Charité had asked him not to administer atropine. The reason they gave him was that they wanted to be able to determine whether Navalny had received atropine in Russia.

Sabayev has mentioned in his Russian press interviews that when initially tested in Omsk hospital, Navalny had a high blood sugar level. Two days later, glucose and insulin levels were back to normal by the time Navalny was tested on arrival at the Charité hospital.

Jacoby said in his latest interview that at Omsk hospital he saw equipment for injecting insulin on Navalny's bed. He added he does not know whether Navalny was actually given insulin. The Russian doctors have said publicly, and Jacoby confirms they told him at the hospital, that they diagnosed Navalny's condition as the result of a "metabolic disorder". This general term includes the type of diabetic collapse which has been reported in the past for Navalny.

In his professional opinion, Jacoby believes the condition in which he found Navalny "did not correspond to a metabolic disorder. The clinical picture would then have been different."

Comparing Jacoby's new disclosures and medical assessments with the clinical test results on Navalny's admission to the Berlin hospital, independent medical sources report puzzlement that for the six hours Navalny was under treatment by Jacoby in the aircraft on the tarmac at Omsk airport, then for the flight to Berlin and his transportation to hospital, he was not treated to prevent the severe dehydration evident in the first German clinical record; and that atropine was withheld.

Jacoby said that the fentanyl in Navalny's blood and urine when first tested in Berlin he had injected "to relieve any pain." He explained also that this enabled him to reduce the amount of propofol "because long-term administration of propofol carries risks." Jacoby said he also had given Navalny propofol. The testing in Berlin revealed sufentanil, not propofol.

A British specialist in organophosphate poisoning commented on the pain-killer mixture first recorded in Berlin: "With fentanyl and sufentanil both being administered, this is a very dangerous cocktail. Obviously for pain management. But why was Navalny in pain? Pain is not an OP [organophosphate] symptom."

After reviewing the full clinical case report signed by Jacoby and the Charité hospital doctors, the British source adds: "I have realised that Salisbury District Hospital [SDH] were not mentioned as a contact resource for the treatment. That must be a strange fact, if true. SDH treated five patients [Sergei Skripal, Yulia Skripal, Nicholas Bailey, Dawn Sturgess, Charles Rowley], and of course were aware of what worked, or did not work in the case of Dawn Sturgess who died. It seems inconceivable that after OP nerve agent was suspected, the German medical team did not draw on the experience of the Salisbury team."

"I do not believe," the British expert went on, "the UK have ever commented on the treatment regime of the UK victims, so this would need to be a direct [German] approach and not a literature referral. Whereas the Germans have gone into minute detail with Navalny, the Brits have said nothing."

He said: "The Germans gave their patient 6 units of plasma in order to 'mop up' any residual nerve agent that remained in Navalny's blood. This means the butyrylcholinesterase from the dispensed plasma was used by (reacted with) the nerve agent. Once they had dealt with the residual nerve agent, then Navalny's own metabolism was able to generate and maintain normal levels. This then begs the question. Did the SDH patients receive blood plasma transfusions also? In Navalny's case, this protocol was fundamental in his recovery. If Salisbury knew this was important, would they not have informed the Jacoby team? This [plasma transfusion] was on Day 6 in the treatment, so eight days after collapse on the [Tomsk-Moscow] plane. Conversely, if SDH were not transfusing fresh plasma to the Skripals and Bailey, then why did they not need it?"

Jacoby confirms he understands the significance of the water bottles as evidence in the Navalny case. He reconfirmed in his third interview that he had received the bottles from Pevchikh in Omsk and agreed to her request to smuggle them on to the medevac aircraft in his own personal luggage. "Maria [Pevchikh]", he adds, "is a very smart girl." On the flight to Berlin, according to Jacoby, "Yulia [Navalnaya] was a little more alert than Maria."

Jacoby is also aware of the significance of Navalnaya's underpants as evidence of the Novichok poisoning which Navalny, the German and NATO governments are alleging. Asked what he saw of Navalny's clothing or in the luggage loaded on to the medevac aircraft, Jacoby said that in Omsk hospital he found Navalny in the usual hospital gown; otherwise he said he was naked. He does not know, he says, whether the clothes were handed over to Navalnaya. Nor does he know what was in the luggage that Navalnaya took to Berlin.

Jacoby also reveals that when he accompanied Navalny as his patient into the Charité hospital for the formal handover, this took place "in the presence of around 30 doctors and officials at the Charité. There were also representatives from abroad." Jacoby says now he does not know who the foreigners were or where they came from.