Yulia Naválnaya, the widow of the opponent Alexei Navalni, who died suddenly last week in a Russian prison, assured this Wednesday before the European Parliament that her husband’s body “was abused” and warned that they still do not know if the police will arrest “to those who come to say their last goodbye” to the activist at the funeral scheduled for Friday in Moscow.
Navalny’s widow addressed MEPs to ask for more action against Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom she described as a “bloody monster.” “If you want to defeat Putin, you have to innovate. You cannot hurt him with resolutions or sanctions,” she said.
Navalnaya assured that Navalny was “tortured and deprived of food.” “And then they killed him. Even after that they abused his body and abused his mother,” he denounced. Which shows, in his words, that “Putin is capable of anything and that you cannot negotiate with him.”
Navalnaya urged European politicians and officials to investigate financial flows in the West linked to the Russian president and his allies. “Putin is the leader of an organized criminal gang. This includes poisoners and murderers, but they are nothing more than puppets. The most important thing are the people close to Putin: his friends, associates and guardians of the mafia’s money,” he said.
“You and all of us must fight against criminal gangs. And the political innovation here is to apply the methods of fighting organized crime, not political competition. Not statements of concern but the search for mafia partners in their countries, of discreet lawyers and financiers who are helping Putin and his friends hide money,” he demanded.
In her speech, Navalnaya reiterated her promise to continue her husband’s work and urged Russians to share her anger against Putin.
The prominent opposition leader will finally be buried on Friday, March 1, in a Moscow cemetery, his spokesman announced this Wednesday. Previously, at 2:00 p.m. (noon in Barcelona), a religious funeral will be held in the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God, in the Moscow neighborhood of Márino, Kira Yármish said in a message on the social network formerly Twitters). There the farewell will be public, and the spokesperson asked those who wish to attend to go early.
The lawyer and opposition activist Alexei Navalni, who was 47 years old and was serving a combined sentence of three decades in prison, died on February 16 in a remote prison in the Arctic Circle known as Polar Wolf for its harsh living conditions. The IK-3 penal colony in the village of Jarp in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug is located 1,900 kilometers northeast of Moscow.
The Investigative Committee is still investigating the causes of his death. The death certificate given to his mother, Ludmila Naválnaya, indicates that she died of natural causes, said the anti-corruption blogger’s allies. According to prison authorities, the opponent felt ill after taking a walk, lost consciousness and then neither the prison services nor the ambulance that arrived could do anything to revive him.
Navalny’s co-religionists reject this version and directly accuse the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, of ordering what they call “murder.”
