Navalny’s bruised body found in Arctic morgue
David Lammy calls for Putin to face war crimes tribunal over death of Russian opposition figure
‘I’d like to see Putin in front of that special tribunal, held to account for all of his crimes’
‘There is no obvious figure to take up the role that Navalny crafted for himself’
THE bruised body of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, has been found in a hospital morgue in the Arctic, two days after he died in a nearby prison.
A paramedic told Russian opposition media that there were bruises on Navalny’s head and chest when his body was brought into the Salekhard District Clinical Hospital.
The unnamed paramedic told the exiled Novaya Gazeta newspaper: “Such injuries, described by those that saw them, appear from seizures.
“The person convulses, they try to restrain him, and bruises appear. They also said that he also had a bruise on his chest. That is, they still tried to resuscitate him, and he died, most likely, from cardiac arrest.”
Russian prison officials said that Navalny died on Friday after feeling ill during a short walk at IK-3, a notoriously brutal prison in the Russian Arctic.
Navalny’s mother failed to find his body at the morgue in Salekhard yesterday and his colleagues at the Anti-corruption Foundation accused the Russian authorities of a cover-up.
Reporters said no autopsy had yet been performed on the body. They also said two unscheduled flights from Moscow had landed on Saturday at Salekhard, possibly with autopsy specialists.
“The first jet landed at about six in the evening, it was met by cars of the investigative committee. And the second one arrived an hour and a half later,” Novaya Gazeta quoted an unnamed source as saying.
Navalny was Vladimir Putin’s most serious opponent. Western leaders have accused the Kremlin of murdering him. He was facing three decades in prison on various charges and was transferred to IK-3 before Christmas.
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, said yesterday that Putin should face war crimes for his death.
He told the BBC’S Laura Kuenssberg: “I’d like to see Putin in front of that special tribunal, held to account for all of his crimes, not just in Ukraine, but as we are seeing just in the last 48 hours in Russia as well.”
Navalny’s sudden death shocked liberal-minded Russians and led to rare protests in Russia, where demonstrations against the Kremlin are banned.
OVD-INFO, a Russian activist group that monitors the Russian police, said 400 people were detained across Russia, mainly for laying flowers for Navalny at memorials to Soviet repression.
Reports from across Russia said that the plain-clothes security services, often wearing surgical masks, were following people who had laid flowers. Different police forces appeared to respond differently with some blocking access to memorial sites and others tearing them down.
Analysts said the timing of Navalny’s death is important for the Kremlin, which wants to use a presidential election next month to showcase support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ben Noble and Nikolai Petrov, fellows on the Russia Programme at Chatham House, said: “There is no obvious figure to take up the role that Navalny crafted for himself, of Vladimir Putin’s main opponent.
“There will be no Navalny 2.0 in the short-term, at least.”
Yesterday, Navalny’s wife, Yulia, posted a picture of the two of them on social media, writing: “I love you.”
Navalny’s death as had deep reverberations. Donald Trump, who has been accused of withholding finding and weapons from Ukraine via Congress, came under fire yesterday for his continued silence over the death.
Joe Biden, the US president, has squarely blamed Putin, but Mr Trump has yet to say a word about Navalny at any of several public appearances since the death was reported.
Nikki Haley, My Trump’s only rival for the Republican nomination, told ABC’S This Week: “The fact that he won’t acknowledge anything with Navalny – either he sides with Putin and thinks it’s cool that Putin killed one of his political opponents, or he just doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal.”
The Trump campaign, asked for comment, has directed reporters to a post on Trump’s Truth Social platform that says: “America is no longer respected because we have an incompetent president who is weak and doesn’t understand what the World is thinking.”
It comes after Mr Trump stunned Western allies by saying he would “encourage” Russia to attack members of the Nato military alliance who had not met their financial obligations.
This drew a warning from Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary-general, that Mr Trump should not “undermine” the alliance’s security.