Russian authorities demand a secret funeral for Alexei Navalny. The claim comes from Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, in a video posted on YouTube on Thursday afternoon. Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny died last week. Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny died in prison last week. He was one of Putin’s fiercest critics. Photo: Tatyana Makeyeva / Reuters – They want him to be buried secretly, without a ceremony. They will take me to the edge of the cemetery, to a new grave and say “here lies your son”. I do not agree to that, says Navalnaja in the video. On the contrary, she wants a public memorial service. – I want you – who were happy for Aleksej, who experienced his death as a personal tragedy – to be able to say goodbye to him, says the mother. On Wednesday evening, she should also have seen her son’s body. 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) Believes the authorities are engaged in blackmail According to Navalnaya, the Russian authorities have threatened to “do something” with his body, if she does not go with a secret burial. – They engage in extortion. They are trying to dictate where, when and how Aleksey should be buried. This is illegal, she says further. She should also have been told by an investigator that time is not on her side, as the body will rot, writes the news agency. – I don’t want special treatment. I just want everything to be done according to the law. I want my son’s body to be handed over immediately, says Navalnaja. In a statement on Thursday afternoon, Navalny’s supporters also report that the death certificate shows that he died of natural causes, reports Reuters. Russian authorities have not yet commented on Navalnaya’s statements. Died in prison Russian prison authorities in the Yamal-Nenets region, where Navalny has been imprisoned, announced that he has died. The message came on 16 February. They say he must have lost consciousness after a walk and died. The Kremlin confirmed the death shortly afterwards, but stated that it did not know anything about the cause of death. His wife Yulia Navalny has said that Putin killed her husband. – Putin did it because he couldn’t break him, Navalnaya said when she attended the EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels on Monday. Then neither she nor her mother had been allowed to see Navalny’s body. The wife thought it was because he had been poisoned, and that the authorities are waiting to hand over the body until the poison is out of his body. Several blame Putin and the Russian authorities After the death became known, several world leaders were quick to point the blame at Vladimir Putin and the Russian authorities. Among other things, US President Joe Biden: – Let there be no doubt: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death, Biden said at a press conference on the same evening that the death became known. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre (Ap) also pointed to the Russian authorities. – He was a political prisoner who died in a Russian prison. Russian authorities bear full responsibility for Navalny’s tragic death, he told news. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi also stated that “it is obvious that Putin killed Navalny”. Putin critic Navalny became particularly famous for his revelations of corruption in the Russian power apparatus. He was the most high-profile critic of President Putin when he was poisoned in August 2020. He returned to Russia after treatment in Germany and was then arrested. He was then imprisoned in a penal colony in Jamal-Nenets, north of central Russia. He served several sentences totaling more than 30 years. In 2022, he was put on the list of terrorists and extremists in Russia. In 2020, he was exposed to an attempted murder. He believes people associated with the Russian security service were behind it. Navalny has long maintained that the allegations were fabricated to stop his political ambitions. In 2021, he received the Sakharov Prize, the EU’s prize for human rights.
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Navalny’s mother about the Russian authorities: – They engage in blackmail
