Alexei Navalny death: Team accuses Russia of ‘hiding’ his body
According to a close aide of the deceased Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, his mother, Lyudmila, has been unable to retrieve his body following his death in an Arctic prison.
Kira Yarmysh, the aide, stated that Lyudmila was informed that the body would only be released after a post-mortem examination had been conducted.
Navalny’s supporters suspect that the anti-corruption activist was assassinated on the orders of President Vladimir Putin. They assert that his sudden demise occurred under suspicious circumstances.
In response to Navalny’s death, a rights group reported that 300 Russians were detained for laying tributes in his honor.
The blame for the 47-year-old’s untimely passing has been attributed by Western governments to Russian authorities. Foreign ministers from the G7 nations have urged Russia to provide urgent clarification regarding the circumstances surrounding Navalny’s demise.
Despite the outcry, President Putin has refrained from making public statements since the announcement by the Russian prison service regarding Navalny’s death at the remote IK-3 prison in the Arctic Circle. Initially, the Kremlin acknowledged the incident and informed the president.
Following a meeting with British officials, Russia’s Foreign Ministry dismissed as “biased and unrealistic” any assessments regarding the cause of Navalny’s death.
Navalny, a prominent figure in Russian opposition to Putin’s rule, was serving a lengthy sentence for politically motivated charges at the “Polar Wolf” penal colony in Kharp, situated approximately 1,200 miles (1,900 km) north of Moscow.
According to reports from his team, Navalny’s mother was informed by the prison service that he collapsed and lost consciousness while out for a walk, leading to his demise on Friday.
She visited the colony on Saturday and was given an official notice stating the time of death as 14:17 local time (09:17 GMT), Ms Yarmysh said.
Another Navalny ally, Ivan Zhdanov, said the activist’s mother was told he died of “sudden death syndrome” – a generic, vague term for a condition that causes sudden death from cardiac arrest with no apparent cause.
His team said that Ms Navalnaya was told his body had been taken to the town of Salekhard, near the prison complex, but when she arrived the morgue was closed.
Prison officials reportedly told her an initial post-mortem examination was inconclusive and a second would have to be carried out.
Navalny’s allies claim his body is purposely being withheld by the Russian authorities so they can “cover traces”, and call for the body to be returned to his family “immediately”.
Meanwhile, more than 300 people have been arrested following vigils and gatherings across Russia, according to independent Russian human rights monitoring group OVD-Info.
OVD-Info, which reports on freedom of assembly in Russia, said arrests had taken place in 32 cities, with the largest numbers in the capital Moscow and St Petersburg.
On Saturday, police in Moscow detained about 15 people who had laid flowers and lit candles at the foot of the “Wall of Grief” monument to the victims of repression during the Soviet era.
Protests are also being held near Russian embassies in many countries.
G7 foreign ministers meeting at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday observed a minute’s silence to pay tribute to the Russian activist.
British Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron said the UK would be “taking action”.
“When appalling human rights outrages like this take place, what we do is we look at whether there are individual people that are responsible and whether there are individual measures and actions we can take,” said Cameron, who added that he would not share in advance what measures the UK intended.
Also in Munich was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who described Mr. Putin as a “thug” and said it was “absurd” to perceive him as the “legitimate head of a Russian state”.
Navalny had been an outspoken critic of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began two years ago next week.
