With one hand hidden from the cameras, Russian opponent Alexei Navalni's mother, Lyudmila Naválnaya, entered the IK-3 prison in the Arctic Circle town of Jarp to look for the remains of his son, whom he had given birth to just five days ago Once seen alive. He found only the deliberate confusion of the Russian authorities. “It is obvious that they are lying and doing everything not to hand over the body,” condemned the activist's spokeswoman, Kira Yarmish, after the family of Navalni, who died this Friday under strange circumstances, offered different versions of what happened had heard.
Nobody close to the opposition leader knows where his body is. One of Putin's most reviled dissidents, if not the most, was secretly transferred in December to the prison in the Yamal-Nenets region, nearly 2,000 kilometers northeast of Moscow. According to the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service, he fainted during a short walk through its facilities.
“When Alexei's lawyer and his mother arrived at the penal colony this morning, they were told that the cause of Navalni's death was sudden death syndrome,” revealed the director of Navalni's Anti-Corruption Foundation, Iván Zhdanov. However, a member of the investigative committee told the family that they would have to repeat the tests and that their results would not be announced until next week. However, the people around him later heard a different version.
Spin in circles
“The lawyers have been informed that the investigation has not led to any criminal proceedings,” Yarmish reported on his social networks in the afternoon. “They literally lie all the time, they make us walk in circles while they cover their tracks,” Navalni’s spokesman denounced.
The only thing Navalny's circle made clear is that the body will not be handed over “until the investigation is completed,” as Russian authorities warned them, although they do not know the whereabouts of the activist's remains.
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“There are no corpses in the morgues,” emphasized Zhdanov. The staff of the IK-3 penal colony informed the opponent's mother that his body had been taken to the Salenjard hospital. However, when Liudmila Naválnaya and her lawyer showed up at her morgue, its doors were closed. When they called the hotline number posted at the entrance, facility staff assured that Navalni was not there.
The Russian opponent, who was poisoned with the powerful chemical warfare agent Novichok in August 2020, has had to endure harsh prison conditions since his imprisonment. According to those around him, he has been sent to the punishment cell up to 27 times since his incarceration in 2021.
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