The body of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been handed to his mother more than a week after he died in an arctic prison colony, his team said on Saturday.
Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, died on Feb. 16 in one of Russia’s toughest prisons in northern Siberia.
He was serving a 19-year sentence on charges denounced by Putin’s critics as political retribution for his opposition activity.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Alexei’s body was handed over to his mother,” a spokesperson for Navalny’s team, Kira Yarmysh, wrote on X. “Many thanks to all those who demanded this with us.”
For a week, Russian officials had refused to give Lyudmila Navalnaya custody of her son’s body.
She had traveled to the town of Salekhard in the Yamalo-Nenets region, the nearest settlement to the prison colony where Navalny died, to recover it.
On Friday, Navalny’s team said they had filed a lawsuit to obtain the body. They accused local officials of having threatened to bury him on the prison grounds if his mother did not agree to a “secret” funeral.
On Saturday, plans for the funeral were still unclear, Yarmysh wrote on X.
“Lyudmila Ivanovna is still in Salekhard. The funeral is still pending,” she wrote. “We do not know if the authorities will interfere to carry it out as the family wants and as Alexei deserves.”
His team has already argued that the Kremlin is trying to block a public funeral, which could turn into a show of support for Navalny’s movement and his opposition to Putin.
The Russian leader, who famously never said Navalny’s name in public, has not commented on the death of his most vocal critic.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has criticized statements by Navalny’s wife and Western leaders blaming Putin for his death as “vulgar.”
Russian authorities said Navalny died of “natural causes” after he lost consciousness following a walk in the prison colony, nicknamed “Polar Wolf.”
His team denounced officials’ initial refusal to release his body — their refusal for days to let his mother even see it — accusing them of trying to “cover their tracks.”
G7 leaders, in a statement on Saturday praising Navalny’s “life fighting against the Kremlin’s corruption” also called for the truth.
“We call on the Russian government to fully clarify the circumstances around his death,” said the statement from the G7 nations: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US.
Tens of thousands of Russians had signed a petition calling for Navalny’s body to be released. Dozens of high-profile Russian cultural figures published video messages urging the same.
Earlier on Saturday, Yulia Navalnaya continued her attack on Putin for what she said was his role in her husband’s death and the initial refusal to release his body.
“You tortured him alive, now you torture him while he is dead,” Yulia Navalnaya said in a video posted online.
“What Putin is doing now is hatred. No, not even hatred, it’s some kind of Satanism,” she said.
She has vowed to continue her husband’s work.
Navalny’s death came after three years of being held in Russian prisons.
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