Navalny's mother was allowed to see the body

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Lyudmila Navalnaya: The mother of the deceased was given access to the body

Photo: Navalny Team / AP / dpa

For almost a week, Russian authorities kept the body of the late Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny under lock and key - although relatives and lawyers remained outside his prison camp in Siberia.

Now the mother of the deceased, Lyudmila Navalnaya, was allowed to briefly see her son's body.

The opposition spokesman reported this on the short message service X. However, the mother was not allowed to take the body with her.

In the Russian Orthodox faith, it is actually customary to bury the dead after three days.

However, the Russian authorities rejected this request.

“She is being blackmailed,” the Navalny team now writes about the authorities’ treatment of Navalny’s mother.

Accordingly, the Kremlin wants to decide when and where Navalny will be buried.

“They want to do this secretly,” Navalny’s supporters accuse the government, without allowing the family to say goodbye.

"Instead they blackmail me"

Lyudmila Navalnaya herself also spoke via video.

The investigators secretly took her to the morgue on Wednesday evening, where she was allowed to see her Alexei.

“The investigators claim that the cause of death is known,” Navalnaya said in the video.

She would have been able to view medical and legal documents and sign the doctor's certificate of death.

"According to the law, they should have handed over Alexei's body to me immediately, but they haven't done that to date," Navalnaya accuses the authorities.

»Instead they are blackmailing me and setting conditions as to where, when and how Alexei should be buried.

This is illegal.”

The mother accuses the Kremlin of being threatened.

"They look me in the eyes and say that they will do something with my son's body if I don't agree to a secret funeral." According to instructions from the Kremlin, the funeral should take place secretly, with no opportunity for the family to say goodbye.

»They want to take me to the edge of the cemetery to a new grave and say: Here lies your son.

I don't agree with that." She goes on to say that she isn't demanding any special treatment, just that everything is done according to the law.

According to authorities, Navalny died on February 16 in his prison camp in the Siberian Arctic region of Yamal.

The politician, weakened by a poison attack in 2020 and repeated solitary confinement in the camp, is said to have collapsed during a tour of the icy prison yard and died despite attempts to resuscitate him.

He was 47 years old at the time of his death.

The cause of death remains nebulous and there are no official statements.

The death is strongly condemned internationally, with many politicians directly or indirectly accusing the regime of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin of murder.

The death is also causing an uproar in Russia itself, hundreds of demonstrators have been arrested by the police, and opposition members are calling for perseverance.

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