The body of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who died suddenly in prison on Feb. 16, was turned over to his mother on Saturday — just one day after she asked local police to open a criminal case against the officials holding his body.
The request from Lyudmila Navalnaya claims the lead investigator into her son’s death had been blackmailing her while threatening to commit actions with his body to prevent a proper burial.
In a post on X, Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh thanked “all those who had demanded” the return of Navalny’s remains, but added that she did not know if they’d be allowed to hold a public funeral “as the family wants.”
Alexey's body was handed over to his mother. Many thanks to all those who demanded this with us.
Lyudmila Ivanovna is still in Salekhard. The funeral is still pending. We do not know if the authorities will interfere to carry it out as the family wants and as Alexey deserves. We…
— Кира Ярмыш (@Kira_Yarmysh) February 24, 2024
“The funeral is still pending,” she said. “We do not know if the authorities will interfere [with it being carried] out as the family wants and as Alexei deserves.”
Earlier on Saturday, Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, accused President Vladimir Putin of mocking Christianity by trying to force the family to agree to a secret funeral after his death at the remote Polar Wolf prison.
She also vowed to continue her late husband’s battle against Putin, questioned the Russian leader’s faith, and accused him of holding Navalny’s body hostage.
“Give us the body of my husband,” Navalnaya said in a video posted to social media. “You tortured him alive, and now you keep torturing him dead. You mock the remains of the dead.”
She added that “no true Christian could ever do what Putin is now doing with the body of Alexei,” calling it “Satanism.”
Navalny, a former lawyer, fell unconscious and died following a walk at the an Arctic penal colony, where he was serving a 30-year sentence, authorities said.
While Russian officials reported he was killed by “sudden death syndrome,” his family, team and followers have maintained he was murdered due to his criticisms and campaigns against Putin.
“It’s obvious that they are lying and doing everything they can to avoid handing over the body,” Yarmysh wrote on X the day after his death.
The anti-corruption fighter was initially arrested in January 2021 upon returning from a hospital in Germany, where he’d been recuperating from what his team called an assassination attempt carried out by the Kremlin. They revealed he initially fell ill during an August 2020 flight from Tomsk, Russia, to Moscow, with several labs around the world confirming nerve-agent poisoning to be the cause.
At that time, he was ordered to spend more than two years in prison for violating probation. Then, in March 2022, Navalny was sentenced to nine years at a high-security facility on fraud and contempt charges, alleged infractions his team has repeatedly called politically motivated.
He was handed an additional 19 years this past summer on charges of extremism relating to his anti-corruption foundation.
Russian officials have repeatedly denied any involvement in the poisoning as well as his recent death.
With News Wire Services
