Navalny’s entourage demands delivery of opponent’s body due to authorities’ reluctance | International

Her grieving face hidden from the cameras by one hand, the mother of Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny, Liudmila Navalnaya, entered the IK-3 prison in the town of Jarp, in the Arctic Circle, this Saturday to search for the remains death of his son, whom he last saw alive just five days ago. He found only deliberate confusion on the part of the Russian authorities. “It is obvious that they are lying and doing everything possible not to hand over the body,” denounced the activist’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmish, after the family of Navalni, who died in strange circumstances this Friday , heard different versions of what happened.

No one around the opposition leader knows where his body is. The man who was 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’s version, he fainted while taking a short walk through its facilities.

“When Alexei’s lawyer and mother arrived this morning at the penal colony, they were told that the cause of Navalny’s death was sudden death syndrome,” revealed the director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation by Navalny, Ivan Zhdanov. However, a member of the investigation committee told the family that they had to repeat the tests and that their results would not be known until next week. Although later the environment heard another different version.

Turn around

“Lawyers have been informed that the investigation has not established any criminal case,” Yarmish reported in the afternoon on his social networks. “They lie literally all the time, they lead us in circles while they cover their tracks,” denounced Navalni’s spokesperson.

The only thing that Navalny’s entourage has made clear is that the body will not be handed over “until the investigation is completed”, as Russian authorities have warned, even if they do not know where it is. the mortal remains of the activist.

“There are no corpses in the morgues,” Zhdanov stressed. Employees of the IK-3 penal colony told the opponent’s mother that his body had been sent to Salenjard Hospital. However, when Liudmila Naválnaya and her lawyer showed up at her morgue, the doors were closed. By calling the hotline number listed at the entrance, employees of the establishment assured that Navalni was not there.

The Russian opponent, poisoned in August 2020 by a powerful chemical agent, novichok, had suffered from severe confinement since his incarceration. Depending on his environment, he has been sent to punishment cells up to 27 times since he was sent to prison in 2021.

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