After days of waiting, the mother of Kremlin critic Navalny was allowed to see her son’s body. She feels threatened by the Russian authorities. According to Navalny’s team, a natural cause of death was noted on the death certificate.
The mother of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian prison camp, has been given access to his body after days of waiting. She saw her son’s body in the morgue. However, the authorities did not hand it over, Lyudmila Navalnaya said in a video.
The 47-year-old died in the prison camp on Friday last week. Since then, the mother had been looking for the body in the Arctic Circle region. In the video, she again demanded that the body be handed over to her so that she could bury it.
Mother speaks of threats from authorities
Navalnaya accused the power apparatus of wanting to secretly put her son underground without any mourning ceremony. She further alleged that the authorities threatened her that they would do something with Navalny’s body unless she agreed to the secret burial. She was told: “Time is not on your side, bodies decay.”
“They want to take me to the corner of a cemetery, to a fresh grave and say: ‘Here lies your son’. I do not agree with this approach,” Navalnaya continued.
Apparently natural cause of death
According to the Kremlin critic’s team, a natural cause of death was noted in the death certificate. However, whether this corresponds to the facts cannot currently be answered independently.
Former President Medvedev mocks Navalny’s widow
Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev verbally attacked the dead man and his widow in an interview he published on his Telegram channel. He initially said he couldn’t say anything good about Navalny, before he criticized Navalnaya. “Look at the smiling, happy face of the Navalny widow: it seems as if she has been waiting all these years to start her political career,” he claimed, despite the many pictures showing the sadness Navalnajas can be seen.
Navalny’s team responded to Medvedev’s slander with the comment: “Scumbag. Lousy scumbag.” Navalnaya later wrote on the online platform X (formerly Twitter) that the Russian power apparatus was only sending Medvedev forward so that people would focus their attention on him – and not on Putin. She added: “Write about the fact that Putin killed Alexei. Write about it every day. As long as you have enough strength.”
Frank Aischmann, ARD Moscow, tagesschau, February 22, 2024 5:59 p.m