02/19/2024 8:13 pm (current 02/19/2024 8:41 pm)
Widow Yulia Navalnaya (l.) accuses Kremsl and Putin (r.) of trying to cover up her husband's murder. ©AP, APA/AFP
According to his team, Russian authorities want to keep the body of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who died in custody, secret for at least 14 days.
“Investigators told Alexei’s lawyers and mother that they would not hand over the body,” Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysch wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday. The reason given was “chemical tests” that would be carried out on the deceased.
On Monday morning, Alexei's mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, and lawyers were not allowed to enter the morgue in the northern Russian city of Salekhard. “Officials do not answer the question of whether Alexei's body is there,” Yarmysch said on X.
Nerve agent should be covered up, says widow
Navalny's widow accused Russian authorities of withholding her husband's body. Authorities waited until there were no more traces of the Novichok nerve agent, Yulia Navalnaya said in a video message on Monday. She accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of killing her husband because he failed to break Navalny. She will continue her husband's work and fight for a free Russia. The widow of the Russian opposition leader was invited to the EU foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels on Monday.
Russian expert Müller on Navalny's death
The West assumes murder by the Kremlin
Human rights activists accuse the Russian power apparatus of murder. The prominent anti-corruption activist's employees also assumed that Navalny was killed deliberately. US President Joe Biden and other Western politicians have also blamed the Kremlin for Navalny's death.
West calls for investigation
Punishments against grieving Russians
Following the death of the 47-year-old Kremlin opponent, Russian courts have so far imposed more than 200 sentences in urgent cases against mourners who participated in the spontaneous remembrance. In Saint Petersburg alone, the metropolis' courts ordered the arrest or fines against 199 people, and there were also several administrative punishments of this type in the Russian capital, Moscow. In St. Petersburg, more than 154 people were held in detention cells, most of them for several days.
Many people laid flowers and lit candles at official memorials to victims of political violence. Authorities continued to try to destroy the spontaneous memorials and flowers were placed in trash bags and taken away. Western ambassadors also laid flowers in Moscow, in front of the secret service headquarters on Lubyanka, and recalled Navalny's courageous resistance against Putin.
Putin is silent
The Russian president, who aims to be re-elected within a month, has not yet commented on the death of his fiercest opponent. According to Russian authorities, Navalny, who was physically weakened after many days in repeated solitary confinement, collapsed on Friday while walking in the courtyard of his Siberian prison camp in freezing temperatures. According to the prison service, resuscitation attempts were unsuccessful.