“We demand that Alexei Navalny’s physique be handed over to his household instantly,” Yarmysh wrote in a assertion on Saturday.
Lyudmila Navalnaya, who had visited her son simply on Monday within the harsh jail camp generally known as “Polar Wolf” in Kharp, a city within the far north area of Yamalo-Nenets, returned there on Saturday morning with Navalny’s lawyer and was given documentation displaying his dying occurred at 2:17 p.m. native time on Friday.
Navalnaya, 69, confronted a grueling and absurd ordeal after she flew into the city of Salekhard early Saturday and drove 33 miles to the Kharp jail, the place officers mentioned that her son’s physique was taken to the morgue in Salekhard, assuring her it was open and working, based on Yarmysh.
However when Navalnaya and a lawyer arrived there, the morgue was closed.
They phoned a quantity on the door, solely to be instructed his physique was not there, Yarmysh mentioned.
Yarmysh mentioned a second Navalny lawyer visited the Investigative Committee in Salekhard, the place officers mentioned Navalny’s physique was present process a medical investigation to determine the reason for dying. They refused handy over the physique till the official investigation is carried out, stating that the outcomes can be launched subsequent week, she mentioned.
“Solely an hour in the past, the legal professionals have been knowledgeable that the investigation had been concluded and that one thing legal had not been established,” Yarmysh posted on Twitter shortly afterward. “They actually lie each time, driving us round in circles and overlaying their tracks.”
The elimination of Navalny’s physique from the jail for potential post-mortem by Russian authorities signifies that the true explanation for his dying could by no means be recognized.
After Navalny was poisoned with a banned nerve agent in August 2020, he and his supporters fought unsuccessfully for the return of the clothes he had been sporting when he was poisoned, hoping to find proof. Throughout an investigation led by the Bellingcat, the investigative journalism group, Navalny later tricked an agent of the Russia’s Federal Safety Service, or FSB, into admitting that he had been despatched to scrub any traces of proof from Navalny’s underwear, which was within the custody of native authorities.
Lyudmila Navalnaya’s battle to get better her son’s physique on Saturday echoes the stark bureaucratic cruelty when Russian safety officers obstructed his spouse, Yulia Navalnaya, from evacuating Navalny from the Siberian hospital after his poisoning in 2020.
He was solely flown to Germany two days later, after Yulia issued a private enchantment to President Vladimir Putin, who granted the request. Navalny was taken to a hospital in Berlin, the place he ultimately recovered and returned to Moscow in 2021. He was then instantly arrested, imprisoned, and given a number of hefty jail phrases, totaling 30 years, in circumstances that he and worldwide rights teams described as trumped up for political retribution.
Yulia Navalnaya and leaders of Navalny’s crew initially mentioned that they didn’t belief statements by Russian authorities on Friday that he had died. However any lingering uncertainty was dispelled Saturday.
Ivan Zhdanov, a pacesetter of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Basis, which is now primarily based in Vilnius, Lithuania, issued a press release saying: “That’s it. It’s over. Alexei Navalny has been assassinated.”
As just lately as Thursday, Navalny was seen on video attending a courtroom listening to, through which he appeared in good well being and good spirits, and was even joking with courtroom officers.
Navalny embodied the resistance to Putin’s regime, greater than some other Russian opposition determine and within the numbing aftermath of his dying, the police arrested dozens of Russians who laid flowers at spontaneous memorials. Late Friday night time, safety officers with trash luggage eliminated piles of flowers.
In Moscow, on the “Wall of Sorrow,” a memorial to the victims of political repressions, riot police overpowered dozens of people that tried to put flowers in reminiscence of Navalny and dragged them to a close-by phalanx of safety automobiles.
Muscovites left flowers at different extremely symbolic places, together with the Solovetsky Stone, a memorial to victims of the Soviet gulag and political repressions in Lubyanka Sq., in entrance of the headquarters of the FSB, beforehand the KGB.
They usually laid flowers at a bridge close to the Kremlin the place one other of Putin’s opposition rivals, Boris Nemstov, was shot to dying on Feb. 27, 2015.
With the political opposition crushed within Russia and the opposition-in-exile divided, the lack of Navalny’s highly effective, charismatic voice raised doubts about its future, only a month earlier than Putin’s sure reelection subsequent month in a presidential contest that excludes any important opponent.
Navalny’s dying was seen as a watershed in Russia signaling that no dissent can be tolerated, as Putin shifts towards a extremely centralized, deeply repressive totalitarian regime.
An opposition determine and member of Navalny’s crew in exile, Vladimir Milov, mentioned he believed that Navalny’s dying was merely homicide. “As a result of they will do something they need now,” Milov mentioned. “They will withhold the physique indefinitely.”
Milov mentioned there may now be no impartial investigation to determine the reason for dying.
Milov, who tried to persuade Navalny to not return to Russia after his poisoning, expressed fury on the members of his crew who inspired him to take action, on the logic that he couldn’t be a related opposition determine in exile.
“The idiotic concept that for those who go into exile, that’s it, you lose your political capital, you lose your affect and so forth — everybody who talks like that and spreads this concept is an confederate to homicide,” he mentioned bitterly. “I need you to remain awake for the remainder of your lives.”
OVD-Information, a Russian authorized rights group that gives authorized help to detainees, mentioned that greater than 231 folks had been arrested in additional than 23 cities. The most important variety of arrests was in St. Petersburg, the place 126 folks have been detained.
Alexander Polupan, a physician who handled Navalny after his 2020 poisoning by a nerve agent, mentioned in an interview on Friday that an post-mortem can be required to determine how he died.
Requested concerning the risk that Navalny could have been poisoned once more, he mentioned figuring out this is able to require a chemical and toxicological examination.
“Proper now we don’t have any medical knowledge to help both model, was it violent dying or pure dying,” Polupan mentioned.
