Tribute to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Friday (16) in Tbilisi, Georgia | Photo: EFE/EPA/DAVID MDZINARISHVILI
The Russian authorities refused this Monday (19) for the third day in a row to hand over to the family the body of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died suddenly in a prison in the Arctic last Friday (16).
“They didn’t let her in. They literally kicked out one of the lawyers,” Navalny’s team, which blames the Kremlin for its leader’s death, reported on its Telegram channel.
The opponent's mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, went to the morgue this Monday to collect the body, but officials said they did not know where Navalny's remains were.
According to OVDInfo, an organization that protects the rights of detainees, more than 50,000 people have already signed a popular petition calling on the authorities to return the body of the political activist to his family.
In return, the Russian Investigative Committee informed the mother and lawyer that “the investigation into the death was protracted.”
“It is not known how long it might take. The causes of death have not yet been clarified. They lie, they buy time and they don’t even hide it,” the opposing team added.
Navalny's allies directly accuse President Vladimir Putin of ordering his assassination in the prison known as the “Arctic Wolf,” where he was sent in December last year after launching a campaign against the Kremlin chief's reelection.
“Three and a half years ago, Putin tried to murder Alexei. Yesterday he killed him,” opposition spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said in a video posted on YouTube, Saturday (17).
Navanly's mother arrived on Saturday in the town of Yarp in the YamalyNenets Autonomous Okrug, where she had already met her son on February 12.
Prison officials confirmed her son's death, but she has not had access to his body or autopsy results since. “We demand the immediate handover of Alexei Navalny’s body to his family,” Yarmysh reiterated.
The family, the opposition, human rights organizations and several Western law firms point out that the Kremlin is directly responsible for the death of Navalny, who was allegedly poisoned by the domestic secret service (FSB, formerly KGB) in 2020 during a trip to Siberia.
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