Alexei Navalny’s family confirmed this Saturday the death of the prominent Russian opponent after his mother traveled to the Arctic prison where the anti-Putin activist died suddenly a day earlier. Navalni’s political team demands that the authorities “immediately” deliver the body to the family.
Ludmila Naválnaya, the politician’s mother, took a plane on Saturday morning that took her from Moscow to Salekhard, the administrative center of the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous district.
From there he traveled by car to Jarp, 60 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. In that town is the IK-3 penal colony, to which the Russian Prison Service transferred Navalni last December.
According to what Navalni’s team, his lawyer and his relatives said on Friday, they were going to travel to Jarp to identify the body, learn first-hand about the circumstances of his death and learn the results of the autopsy.
The opponent’s mother received the death certificate from prison officials, Navalny’s collaborators said.
From the social network Citing a message from Ludmila Navalnaya, Yármish said that Navalny died in prison at 2:17 p.m. on February 16. “Alexei Navalny was murdered,” she said.
In addition, he denounced a lack of information on the part of the authorities. “An employee of the penal colony said that his body is now in Salekhard. Investigators from the Investigation Committee picked him up. Now they are conducting ‘investigations’ with him,” he said. But, after the arrival of Navalni’s lawyer and mother at the Salekhard morgue, it “was closed.” When they called by phone, they were told that “he was the seventh to call today and that Alexei’s body was not in the morgue.”
“We demand that Alexei Navalny’s body be immediately delivered to his family,” Yármish requested.
Investigators told the lawyer that the cause of death had not yet been established and that “a new histological examination” would be performed. “The results must be known next week. It is evident that they are lying and doing everything possible to avoid having to hand over the body,” said the spokesperson.
Navalny, who was 47 years old and had been behind bars since 2021, died suddenly on Friday in the prison nicknamed Polar Wolf for its extreme living conditions, according to the Russian Prison Service after taking a walk.
The Russian opposition and Western governments have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering the assassination of Navalny, who was his number one enemy.
But Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov rejected the accusations, which he considered “unacceptable”, and asked that they wait for the official version to be known following the results of the autopsy.
Sentenced to live three decades in prison after several consecutive sentences, Navalny had no opportunity to participate in the presidential elections that will be held in a month and that, with complete certainty, the current head of the Kremlin will win again. But even from prison he has taken part in the political struggle. In December he asked Russian citizens not to vote for Putin and to support any other candidate.
