What happened to Alexei Navalny's body?
What are the Russian authorities hiding?
Is he really dead?
The questions are multiplying two days after the disappearance of the Russian opponent and number one adversary of Vladimir Putin.
The 47-year-old inmate was announced dead Friday at Arctic Prison, where he was serving a 19-year sentence.
Her relatives went to the morgue... but did not find the remains there, contrary to what the penal colony had claimed.
According to the administration,
“the causes of death are being established”
.
To discover
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An official document confirms the death
According to the Russian Prison Service (FSIN), Alexeï Navalny died on Friday after having a sudden illness.
“On February 16, 2024, in penitentiary center No. 3, prisoner Navalny AA felt unwell after a walk and almost immediately lost consciousness
,” the FSIN of the Arctic region of Yamal said in a statement.
“All necessary resuscitation measures were carried out but did not produce positive results.
The emergency doctors noted the death of the patient
,” he said.
The hospital next to the prison, in the town of Labytnangui, announced that rescuers were sent to the scene within seven minutes after the prison camp was called.
“The doctors who arrived on site continued the resuscitation operations that had already been carried out by the prison doctors.
They chased them for more than 30 minutes.
However, the patient died
,” he said.
Read also Death of Navalny: how Putin eliminates his opponents, in the bloody wake of Lenin and Stalin
Russian television briefly reported the death on Friday.
The Russian head of state Vladimir Putin, traveling in the Urals on Friday, was
“informed”
of the death, but did not react publicly.
The opponent's mother, Lyudmila Navalnaïa, went on Saturday to the IK-3 penal colony where her son was imprisoned and received an
“official document”
confirming his death, announced Kira Iarmich, the spokesperson. by Alexei Navalny.
The body demanded, in vain
The prison administration affirmed that
“the causes of death are being established”.
A
lawyer for the deceased, who went to see the investigators,
"was informed that 'the cause of Alexei's death had not been determined, that a new histological examination had been carried out
,'" Kira Iarmich said on Saturday.
“The results should be known next week. It is obvious that they are lying and doing everything possible to avoid having to hand over the body
,” to which the relatives demanded to be able to
“immediately”
access, she added.
Alexei Navalny's spokesperson described the arrival of his mother and his lawyer at the Salekhard morgue
.
“It was closed, even though the (penal) colony had assured that it was functioning and that Navalny's body was there.
The lawyer called the phone number on the door.
He was told that he was the seventh to call today and that Alexei's body was not in the morgue
,” she reported.
The opponent's team is certain: the Russian authorities want to hide a murder.
“It is obvious that the killers want to cover their tracks.
“That’s why they don’t hand over Alexei’s body and even hide it from his mother
,” they said.
A emaciated and aged inmate
Alexeï Navalny narrowly survived in 2020 a poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok while he was on the electoral campaign in Siberia, which he and his supporters had attributed to the Kremlin.
Transferred in a coma to Germany for treatment, he chose to return to Russia after his convalescence and was immediately arrested.
This poisoning, a hunger strike and repeated stays in solitary confinement had left a physical mark on him.
Incarcerated since January 2021, Alexeï Navalny was given yet another sentence last August: 19 years for
“extremism”
to be spent in one of the harshest establishments in the Russian prison system.
This tall blond with piercing blue eyes appeared thin and aged during the remote broadcasts of the last hearings in which he was involved, the last way to see him.
State news agency Ria Novosti said Friday that he had participated by video in two court hearings in the Vladimir region the day before and had not complained about his health.
His mother claimed to have seen her son on February 12 in his penal colony and that he was then
“in good health and in a happy mood”
.