Canadian rights activist poisoned by Russians?

Russia has banned Canadian Member of Parliament Irwin Cotler from entering the country, but Cotler is not sorry, in part, because he thinks he was poisoned the last time he was there.

Cotler is a long-time human rights lawyer who once represented Russian dissidents Natan Sharansky and Andrei Sakharov. He has also advocated for accused spy and environmentalist Vladimir Nikitin, and recently took up the cause of Sergei Magnitsky, whose death in a Russian prison in 2009 brought charges of human rights violations against the Vladimir Putin regime.

In June 2006, Cotler was part of an official Canadian delegation to Russia. He became violently ill after dinner and began to vomit blood. He called the front desk and asked for a doctor, but he says cleaners were sent instead. He eventually went to hospital and was treated but was given no diagnosis.

Other suspected poisonings

One of Cotler’s former classmates from Yale Law School, Luzius Wilhaber, the former president of the European Court of Human Rights, also said he had been poisoned when he visited Russia, shortly after Cotler’s trip.

Other suspicious poisonings include the case of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent who died within three weeks of being poisoned with a radio active substance. In 2004 Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko was treated and recovered from being poisoned with dioxin.

Cotler was banned from entering Russia as were other Canadian officials, in retaliation for Canada’s banning of Russian officials because of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

‘Sorry…it was a mistake’

Cotler’s suspicions about his own poisoning were heightened when he was chatting with Russian Embassy officials in Ottawa in 2010. He says they asked him why he hadn’t visited Moscow lately. He said his reply was, “Well the last time I was there I was poisoned.”

He said the Russians responded, “Sorry about that. It was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”