Navalny’s ‘killers are hiding body from mum’
MOSCOW: Alexei Navalny’s supporters have accused Russian authorities of being “killers” who were “covering their tracks” by refusing to hand over his body, as the Kremlin stayed silent despite Western accusations and a flood of tributes to the late opposition leader.
The 47-year-old Kremlin critic died in an Arctic prison on Friday after spending more than three years behind bars, prompting outrage and condemnation from Western leaders and his supporters.
Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila, and his lawyer were refused access to his body on Saturday after arriving at the remote Siberian prison colony where he had been held, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said.
“It’s obvious that the killers want to cover their tracks and are therefore not handing over Alexei’s body, hiding it even from his mother,” Navalny’s team said in a Telegram post.
“They don’t want whatever method they used to kill Alexei to come out,” Yarmysh said in an online broadcast.
Navalny’s mother and lawyer were told on Saturday he died of “sudden death syndrome” -- a vague term with no specific medical meaning.
“There’s no such thing ... that can’t be the cause of death,” Yarmysh said.
Across Russia, police moved swiftly to break up small protests in honour of the Kremlin critic, arresting more than 400 people in 36 cities, the OVDInfo rights group said.
“Alexei Navalny’s death is the worst thing that could happen to Russia,” said one note left among flowers at a makeshift memorial in Moscow.
After initially pushing back at accusations they were to blame, there was no comment from the Kremlin on his death on Saturday, despite an angry chorus of condemnation from Western leaders.
G7 foreign ministers meeting in Munich held a minute’s silence for the leader on Saturday, while US President Joe Biden explicitly blamed Russian president Vladimir Putin, who has not commented.
Russian Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov said Navalny’s death was “murder” and that he was “tortured and tormented” for three years in prison.
Supporters staged antiPutin protests and pop-up tributes to Navalny around the world.
In a video posted by the independent Sota outlet from Moscow, a woman screamed as a crowd of police officers detained her, to chants of “shame” from onlookers.
On a bridge next to the Kremlin, hooded men scooped up flowers into bin bags that had been laid at an unofficial memorial to Navalny ally and slain Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov.
Russian courts started issuing jail sentences of up to 15 days for those detained at the commemorations, rights groups reported.
Navalny died on Friday when he lost consciousness after having “felt bad after a walk”, Russia’s federal penitentiary service said.