Reuters Kharp (Russia)

Kharp (Russia)

Updated Saturday, February 17, 2024-14:13

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The family of the opposition Alexei Navalny will have to wait. Russian opposition spokesperson Kira Yarmysh has reported that the "Investigative Committee says directly that Alexey's body will not be handed over to his relatives until the investigation is completed" into his "sudden" death after the family had requested his " immediate delivery".

The spokesperson confirmed this Saturday that Navalny was dead, citing the official notification given to

Navalny's

mother , Lydumila, but said that

the body was not in the morgue in Salekhard

, the city near the prison colony where he was serving his sentence, where he has been his mother was displaced this morning.

Navalny, a 47-year-old former lawyer,

fell unconscious and died on Friday after a walk at the

Lobo Pola

r Arctic prison colony

in Jarp, about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow, where he was serving a years-long sentence. according to the version of the Russian authorities. "The cause of Navalny's death was sudden death syndrome," the family was informed.

"We demand that Alexei Navalny's body be

immediately handed over to his family

," Yarmysh said.

Kira Yarmysh said that Navalny's mother and lawyer had

visited the morgue and found it closed

, despite assurances from the penal colony that it was operational and that the Russian opponent's body was there.

"Alexei's body is not in the morgue

," Yarmysh said on X, formerly Twitter.

Kira Yarmysh has denounced the lies of the Russian authorities. "They literally lie all the time, making us go around in circles and covering their tracks," she has written in X.

Yarmysh has denounced that they are told that they are waiting for the end of an investigation to be able to hand the body over to the family when only an hour ago "the lawyers were informed that the

" investigation had concluded and that nothing had been established criminal

," he writes.

The same thing that has reported that another of Navalny's lawyers, who went to the Salekhard morgue, was told that "the cause of Alexey's death has not yet been established, and a

new histological examination has been carried out."

Lyudmila Navalnaya, the mother of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has traveled to the prison colony where he died, accompanied by Navalny's lawyer, the Russian newspaper

Novaya Gazeta

reported this Saturday .

The mother, after informing the prison services of Navalny's death, said that her son was

"alive, healthy and happy" the last time she saw him on February 12.

According to

Novaya Gazeta

, Lyudmila Navalnaya wrote in a Facebook post on Friday: "I don't want to hear condolences. We saw him in prison on February 12, at a meeting. He was alive, healthy and happy."