Two U.S.
officials reportedly were given a date-rape-type drug last year inside an
upscale hotel bar in St. Petersburg, Russia in what unfolded like a scene out
of a spy
thriller.
The two
low-level diplomats—identified only as a man and a woman—apparently were
slipped the drugs at separate times during a United Nations event in November
2015, but were not robbed. When one was treated at a Western medical clinic and
medical staff reportedly tried to test sensitive tissue samples, the
electricity inside the building suddenly cut out.
Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, which broke the story, cited an unnamed U.S.
government official with knowledge of the incident. The report went on to say
the drugged individual was flown out of the country in an attempt to collect
tissue evidence, but too much time had passed.
Moscow asked
for evidence about the drugging, but the U.S. reportedly had none due in part
to the outage. The unnamed hotel—adding to the mystery—reportedly did not have
a timesheet of personnel working at the time.
Elizabeth
Kennedy Trudeau, a press officer at the State Department, said during a press conference Monday
that she would not comment on the specifics of the reported incident but said
“we are troubled; we remain troubled by the way our diplomatic and consular
staff have been treated over the past two years.”
“In
particular, the harassment and surveillance of our diplomatic personnel in
Moscow by security personnel and traffic police—has increased significantly,”
she said.
The officials
were in St. Petersburg during the United Nations Convention against Corruption,
which occurred on November 2 to 6 of 2015. The two reportedly were not
top-level officials.
They were
believed to have been drugged separately and there is no indication that they
were robbed, the report said.
It's not the
first recent episode highlighting a tense diplomatic relationship between
Washington and Moscow.
In June, the
U.S. expelled two Russian officials in response to an attack on an American
diplomat by a Russian policeman in Moscow, in a development that further
strained already tense bilateral relations.
A video of the scuffle shows a man
exiting a taxi in an area resembling an embassy entrance and striding toward
the doors. The guard bursts out of a sentry box and tackles the man, who is
able to crawl through the entrance doors.
The Russian
Foreign Ministry claimed the American was a CIA agent who refused to provide
his identification documents and hit the guard in the face. Moscow says the
policeman was fulfilling his duties defending the embassy.
John Kirby,
the State Department spokesman, said at the time that the attack was
"unprovoked and it endangered the safety of our employee."
FoxNews.com's Edmund
DeMarche and The Associated Press contributed to this report
FOX NEWS
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