2024-02-24 16:09:33
The Russian authorities agreed this Saturday to hand over to his mother the body of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in prison under unclarified circumstances nine days ago, according to the politician’s team.
“Alexei’s body has been delivered to his mother. Thank you to everyone who demanded it along with us,” Kira Yarmish, spokesperson for the deceased opponent, wrote on the social network X.
Yarmish added that Navalny’s mother, Liudmila, is still in the Arctic city of Salekhard, close to the prison where her son died on the 16th.
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“We have the funerals ahead, but we don’t know if the authorities are going to prevent them from being held as the family wishes and as Alexei deserves,” he added and promised to keep the politician’s followers up to date with the news “as emerge.”
(Read also: Alexei Navalny, the fierce dissident who challenged the power of Vladimir Putin in Russia)
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s main opponent died on February 16 in a prison in northern Siberia, where he was serving a 19-year sentence on charges widely seen as political retaliation.
Since last week, the Russian authorities have refused to hand over Navalny’s body to his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, who traveled to the city of Salekhard, in the Yamalia-Nenetsia region, near the prison colony where the opponent died.
The Russian Instruction Committee (CIR) had presented an ultimatum this Friday to the mother of the Russian opposition leader to accept a secret burial in order to avoid public demonstrations once morest the Kremlin, according to Navalny’s co-religionists.
Liudmila Naválnaya refused to negotiate with the CIR, arguing that its investigators “do not have the power to decide how and where to bury her son.”
Navalny’s widow, Yulia, who directly accuses Russian President Vladimir Putin of being behind her husband’s death, had also denounced this Saturday in a video that the country’s authorities had not handed over the opponent’s body for nine days.
(You can read: Alexei Navalny: the strongest phrases once morest Putin from the late Russian opposition leader)
“Return my husband’s body. We want to celebrate his funeral and deliver him to the earth, as God commands, as the Orthodox do. Give us Alexei without conditions,” Navalnaya demanded.
Navalny’s team had filed a lawsuit in court under article 244 of the Russian criminal code on “desecration of the body of the deceased.”
And, a few days ago, the politician’s mother also sent a letter to the Russian president asking them to hand over the body of her son, who died suddenly on February 16.
We want to celebrate his funeral and deliver him to the earth, as God commands, as the Orthodox do.
On Friday, several Nobel laureates, Russian intellectuals and artists had addressed the Kremlin by video in a campaign organized by Navalny’s followers to allow the deceased politician to be buried and not prolong the family’s agony.
(Also: Two years of Russian invasion of Ukraine: conflict of high human cost and uncertain ending)
According to the opposition, the authorities wanted to repeat the same scenario as with the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in August in an air disaster following leading a military rebellion once morest Putin and was buried almost clandestinely amid strict security measures.
In fact, the official medical certificate already signed by the opponent’s mother attempts to put an end to any speculation regarding the Kremlin’s involvement: Navalny died of “natural causes” following three years behind bars and regarding 300 days in punishment cells.
Due to Navalny’s death, for which several governments blame Putin, the United States announced sanctions on three Russian prison officials this Friday.
Those sanctioned are the director of the prison system of the Yamalo-Nenets region, Igor Borisovich Rakitin, and the jailer Vadim Konstantinovich Kalinin, from the Kharp penal colony where Navalny died, regarding 2,000 kilometers from Moscow.
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He also joins the deputy director of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia, Valeriy Gennadevich Boyarinev, the highest-ranking official sanctioned for his role in supervising the IK-3 Penal Colony, where the opponent was interned.
According to the US complaint, Boyarinev instructed prison staff to apply harsher treatment to him. After the death of the opponent, he was promoted to ‘colonel general’ by Putin’s decree.
Along with these actions, the State Department sanctioned several individuals to promote accountability for acts supporting Russia’s war.
*With EFE
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