As of: February 26, 2024, 1:47 p.m
By: Lisa Mahnke
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Navalny's body remains with the Russian state.
Mother Navalnaya is being blackmailed.
Can the family hold his funeral as requested?
Salekhard – A week after the death of Putin critic Alexei Navalny, the only thing that is clear is that a funeral will take place.
But not whether the farewell will be possible “as the family would like and as Alexei deserves,” said Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysch.
According to Lyudmila Navalnaya, the mother of the deceased, the Russian government still wants to force her to have a secret funeral.
It does not yet seem to be clear whether the funeral will be secret or open.
“An hour ago, an investigator called Alexei's mother and gave her an ultimatum.
Either she agrees to a secret funeral without a public farewell within three hours, or Alexei will be buried in the colony,” Yarmysh said, according to
CNN
.
It's about the Arctic penal colony in Russia where the Kremlin critic died about a week ago.
According to Jarmysch, the date is also still unclear - the body was only handed over to the family on Saturday.
“They started threatening me” – Mother Navalnaya fights against blackmail single-handedly
According to authorities, Alexei Navalny died on February 16 in the penal camp with the unofficial name “Arctic Wolf” in the Siberian Arctic region of Yamal.
The circumstances of his death are not clear.
The politician, weakened by the poison attack in 2020 and repeated solitary confinement in the camp, is said to have collapsed during a tour of the icy prison yard and died despite attempts to resuscitate him.
Memorials to Alexei Navalny are already being set up at many Russian embassies in Europe.
© IMAGO/ZUMA Wire/Volha Shukaila
Since Navalny's wife and his team are largely in exile, his mother had to single-handedly take care of the handover of her son's body and the burial.
Lyudmila Navalnaya encountered resistance from the start.
The Navalny team accused the Russian government
of being afraid of large crowds at the funeral, according to
CNN .
During her stay in the Arctic Russian town of Salekhard, where Navalny's body was brought after his death, massive pressure was put on her.
“I spent almost 24 hours there, alone with the investigators.
They didn’t let my lawyer in until that afternoon,” said Lyudmila Navalnaya in a video published on Navalny’s YouTube channel.
There, according to her own statements, she signed a report in which a natural cause of death was determined.
The body was not released until a day after the interview.
Navalnaya filed a complaint of “corpse abuse” on Friday because the body was held longer than the legal two days, the Kremlin critic’s mother said.
“They started threatening me.
They looked me in the eyes and said that they would do something with my son's body if I didn't agree to a secret burial," Navalnaya said in her YouTube message.
Navalny family outraged: “Absolutely insulting attitude of the investigative authorities” in Russia
According to Navalnaya, one of the investigators is said to have said, “Time is working against you because the body is decaying,” in order to build up further pressure.
“Such words cause irreparable moral damage, the grief over the loss of her son is complemented by an absolutely insulting attitude of the investigative authorities and blackmail,” is Navalnaya’s accusation, according to
ABC News.
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The widow Yulia Navalnaya accused Putin, who said he was a devout Christian, of “open Satanism” in a video message on Saturday because he mocked the remains of a dead man.
“They tortured him alive and continue to torture him dead,” said Navalny’s wife.
“They break every human and divine law.”
The Kremlin, however, rejects the allegations.
After days of struggle over the body of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who died in custody, the Kremlin has denied attempting to influence his relatives.
“Of course the Kremlin cannot exert any pressure.
These are further absurd statements by (Navalny's) supporters," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday, according to the
Interfax
news agency .
Voice from Navalny's team against Putin: "He doesn't want to see it on TV"
But the Navalny team doesn't want to leave it like that.
"This is hell on earth right before our eyes," Maria Pevchikh, the head of investigations at Navalny's anti-corruption foundation, said on Friday, according to
CNN
, accusing the Russian government of having "new ideas for blackmail every day."
The Russian presidential elections will take place in March and Pevchikh has precise hypotheses about Vladimir Putin's reasons for the backlash that Navalny's mother is experiencing: "He sees this as a kind of rally, a political turmoil that he doesn't need now.
He doesn't want to see it on TV."
(lismah)