On Friday, the prison authorities in Yamal-Nenets, where Navalny was imprisoned, announced that the well-known opposition politician had died during a walk. The Kremlin said on Friday that it had no information on the cause of death, but that the death was being investigated by prison authorities. The Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta writes on Sunday afternoon that Navalny’s body will have been found in the morgue at the hospital in Salekhard. Navalny’s family has demanded that the body be extradited. But the inquiry committee stated on Saturday that the body will not be handed over to the family until the investigation is complete. There were updates on the same day from Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Jarmysh on X, where she described several conflicting reports about the cause of death and where the body was located. Navalny with parts of his team in 2017. From left spokesperson Kira Jarmysh. Photo: AP Novaya Gazeta wrote on Friday that a source at the prison authorities believed the body would most likely be sent to Moscow for an autopsy. Can be detained for 30 days On Saturday, the independent Russian newspaper Meduza writes that the investigation the investigative committee launched on Friday means that the authorities will not have to hand over the body to the family until after 30 days. Lawyer at the human rights organization OVD-Info, Eva Levenberg, claims on Saturday to the website Agentstvo that the committee has initiated the investigation in order to retain the body. – As long as the investigation is ongoing, they can legally keep the body for 30 days, says the lawyer. Forensic medicine: First examination decisive Arne Stray-Pedersen is a forensic medicine specialist at Oslo University Hospital. He emphasizes that the first forensic examination is crucial. – It is the primary examination where you have the opportunity to find the cause of death. In forensic medicine, it is absolutely crucial that you can trust those who do the investigations, he says. Professor at the Department of Forensic Medicine at the University of Oslo, Arne Stray-Pedersen. Pictured here at Rikshospitalet in 2015. Photo: Berit Roald / NTB From what he knows, from examples of dead citizens where there is no trust in the authorities who carry out the first investigations, it is difficult to carry out a new investigation. – If the body is not destroyed, we can only see if there are fractures. But detecting signs of violence, damage to organs, diseases or poisoning is very difficult when an autopsy has already been carried out, he says. – Losing the opportunity for independent investigations Stray-Pedersen says forensic medicine is a very large field in Russia where they have developed large institutions. – But as elsewhere in society, independence can be questioned. The question is whether you can trust what is written, the pictures that are taken and the work that is done. Facts about Aleksej Navalny Russian regime critic and blogger (b. 1976) with millions of followers on Twitter and YouTube. Trained as a lawyer. Married and father of two. In 2007, started an anti-corruption campaign by buying into state-controlled companies in order to be able to ask critical questions at the general meetings. Has organized a number of demonstrations against President Vladimir Putin. Excluded from the liberal party Jabloko in 2008, where he had been active since 2000, for damaging the party with his nationalist tendencies. Leader of the small Partija Progressa – the Progress Party – since its creation in 2013. Received 27 percent of the vote in the mayoral election in Moscow in September 2013. Has been arrested and convicted of embezzlement and money laundering, charges he himself claims were politically motivated. He has also been arrested and convicted for taking part in illegal demonstrations several times. Wanted to stand as a presidential candidate and challenge Putin in the 2018 election, but the candidacy was not approved. On 20 August 2020, he became acutely ill on a passenger plane en route from Siberia to Moscow. Two days later he was evacuated to Berlin after strong Western pressure. Tests have shown that he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok. On 17 January 2021, Navalny was arrested when he returned to Russia. He was sentenced in February 2021 to serve 2.5 years in a labor camp for breaching the duty to report following a conditional sentence from 2014. The sentence was based on a fraud case that Navalny rejects as forgery. In the spring of 2021, he led a hunger strike lasting over three weeks with demands for better health care. The strike was ended at the request of the doctors and after large demonstrations of support in Russia. On 26 April 2021, a court in Moscow decided that Navalny’s foundation had to stop all activities while they waited for a legal decision on whether the foundation was extremist. On 30 April 2021, the Navalny Foundation appeared on the extremist list of Russia’s financial monitoring service Rosfinmonitoring. On 16 February 2024, the prison authorities in the Yamal-Nenets region, where Navalny is imprisoned, announced that he had died. They state that he lost consciousness after a walk and died. (Source: NTB, news) If a foreign citizen dies under suspicious circumstances in Norway, and the person is from a country that questions its independence, it would be natural to invite personnel from there to participate, for the greatest possible transparency, according to the coroner. – If remains are kept for 30 days, you lose the opportunity to carry out independent investigations. Then it is not possible to verify the findings, says Stray-Pedersen and adds: – But in my profession, if we get the opportunity to have a body handed over after 30 days, we say yes. Any scope is better than nothing. But we also know that then there is much that we have no chance of finding. Depends on handling Coroner Ida Kathrine Gravensteen at Oslo University Hospital emphasizes that what is possible to find during a forensic examination after 30 days will depend on how, and at what temperature, the body has been stored. Coroner Ida Kathrine Gravensteen pictured on a previous occasion. Photo: PATRICK DA SILVA SÆTHER / news – Microbiological tests to detect possible infection will probably be worthless anyway. Biochemical and toxicological test results are also becoming more uncertain, she says. – If there are major injuries, they should still be visible if the body is not significantly decayed. But any discreet syringes will be harder to detect the longer you have to wait to look for them, continues the coroner. Previous autopsy or other manipulation also affects what can be uncovered. Yes, the faster, the better Lars Uhlin-Hansen is professor of forensic medicine and pathology at the Arctic University of Norway, UiT. He says he has not followed the case of Alexei Navalny, but that it would generally be better the sooner a re-examination or re-autopsy is carried out after a death. – It really depends on how the body is handled. If it is cold, the decay will proceed slowly, and then even after 30 days you will be able to carry out a reasonably good examination of organs, says Uhlin-Hansen. Professor of forensic medicine Lars Uhlin-Hansen in 2021. Photo: Rune Nordgård Andreassen / news He believes that several drugs and medicines will remain, but that some substances, such as certain radioactive substances, disappear quite quickly. – You cannot ignore the fact that certain toxins can disappear within 30 days. In Norway, a forensic autopsy is carried out as quickly as possible after death has occurred, and as a rule the body is released to the family within a few days. Uhlin-Hansen says the remains are also released in most murder cases within a week, if the body is identified.
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