Navalny team, confirming death, demands authorities return body to family

Lyudmila Navalnaya, who had visited her son simply on Monday within the harsh jail camp generally known as “Polar Wolf” in Kharp, returned on Saturday morning with Navalny’s lawyer and was given documentation displaying his dying occurred at occurring 2:17 p.m. native time on Friday.

Yarmysh mentioned jail officers advised Navalnaya that the physique “was taken away by investigators of the Investigative Committee.” She added, “Now they’re conducting investigations with him.”

The removing of Navalny’s physique from the jail to the close by metropolis of Salekhard for potential post-mortem by Russian authorities signifies that the true reason for his dying could by no means be identified.

Alexei Navalny’s wife and two children learned of his death from afar

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 carrying 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 wash 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 attraction to President Vladimir Putin who granted the request. Navalny was taken to a hospital in Berlin the place he finally 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 instances which he and worldwide rights teams described as trumped up for political retribution.

Yulia Navalnaya and leaders of Navalny’s group 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 based mostly 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 court docket listening to, through which he appeared in good well being and good spirits, and was even joking with court docket officers.

For Putin nemesis Alexei Navalny, long-feared death arrives in Arctic prison

Navalny embodied the resistance to Putin’s regime, greater than another 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 areas, 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.

And so they 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.

Navalny’s health in harsh prison system was major concern before death

OVD-Information, a Russian authorized rights group that gives authorized help to detainees, mentioned that by midmorning Saturday, greater than 220 individuals had been arrested in additional than 13 cities. The biggest variety of arrests was in St. Petersburg, the place 119 individuals had 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 could be required to ascertain how he died.

Requested concerning the risk that Navalny could have been poisoned once more, he mentioned figuring out this may require a chemical and toxicological examination.

“Proper now we don’t have any medical information to assist both model, was it violent dying or pure dying,” Polupan mentioned.