Lyudmila Navalnaya has accused Russian investigators of “blackmailing” her over the funeral of her son, Alexei Navalny.
In a video published on YouTube, she claimed that they were trying to force her to hold a private burial ceremony without mourners.
Navalnaya said she was taken secretly to a morgue to view her son’s body.
She said, “According to the law, they should have given me Alexei’s body right away, but they have not done so until now.”
“Instead, they are blackmailing me, setting me conditions on where, when and how Alexei should be buried. This is illegal,” she added.
She stated that Russian investigators want Navalny’s burial to be done secretly, “with no farewell.”
“They want to bring me to the edge of a cemetery, to a fresh grave and say: here lies your son. I don’t agree to this,” she voiced.
“Looking me in the eye, they said that if I do not agree to a secret funeral, they’ll do something with my son’s body … I ask for my son’s body to be given to me immediately…
“I want that for those of you for whom Alexei is dear, for everyone for whom his death became a personal tragedy, to have the possibility to say goodbye to him.”
Lyudmila Navalnaya
Navalnaya has been trying to retrieve her son’s body since Saturday, February 17, 2024, after he died in a penal colony in Russia’s far north a day earlier.
Shortly after Navalnaya’s message was published, Navalny’s team announced that a death certificate shown to her said the opposition leader died from “natural causes.”
Allies of Navalny described the authorities’ conduct surrounding his body as “medieval.”
“This kind of abuse of a dead body is hard to even imagine,” said Ivan Zhdanov, a close friend of the Navalny family.
The Kremlin appears to be trying to make sure Navalny’s funeral does not turn into a public show of support for the opposition leader.
“Authorities fear Navalny’s funeral could turn into a political action,” wrote Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
“But people mourn him calmly and with dignity, even though they are being persecuted for it,” he added, referring to the hundreds of Russians who have been detained while paying tribute to Navalny.
The opposition leader’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, on Thursday repeated that the Russian President was personally responsible for the death, writing on X: “[Vladimir] Putin killed Navalny.”
The Kremlin denies all involvement in Navalny’s death.
Russian Foreign Minister,Sergey Lavrov described the United States’ reaction to Navalny’s death as “hysteria.”
“The U.S acts as the prosecutors, as the judge, and as the punisher all in one, and this hysteria regarding the death of Navalny is a prime example of that,” he said on Thursday at a news conference at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
“These people have no rights to interfere in our home affairs, especially given their own problems,” he added.
Russians Urged Not To Give Up
Meanwhile, from a Siberian jail, a prominent Russian-British opposition figure has urged Russians not to give up after the death of Navalny.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, who studied at the University of Cambridge, was detained in April 2022 and charged with spreading false information about the Russian army in Ukraine.
He was later also charged with high treason over public speeches he made that criticised Kremlin policies and the war in Ukraine.
“We owe it … to our fallen comrades to continue to work with even greater strength and achieve what they lived and died for,” Kara-Murza said during a court appearance from jail.
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