Russia
Navalny’s mother’s lawsuit only went to court in March
Lyudmila Navalnaya, the mother of the dead Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, has been searching in vain for her son for days. A court will not hear the application to return the body until March.
According to authorities, Navalny collapsed last Friday while walking in the prison camp north of the Arctic Circle. Attempts to resuscitate the prison officers were in vain, it is said. Navalny was only 47 at the time of death, but was weakened by a poison attack in 2020 and repeated solitary confinement in the camp.
The authorities are denying relatives access to Navalny’s body, despite international protests. His team, which accuses the Russian power apparatus of murder, sees this as an attempted cover-up. In Russia, more than 70,000 people have already signed a call for the body to be returned to relatives. Navalny’s mother Lyudmila personally asked Russian President Vladimir Putin in a video on Tuesday to see and bury her son as quickly as possible. So far there has been no reaction from the Kremlin.