Alexei Navalny’s team confirms his death, ‘unclear where his body is’
Alexei Navalny’s spokesperson confirmed Saturday that the Russian opposition leader had died at a remote Arctic penal colony and said he was “murdered,” but it is unclear where his body is, AP reports.
His death — less than a month before an election that will give Putin another six years in power — has removed President Vladimir Putin of his greatest political foe who organised mass anti-Kremlin protests and crusaded against corruption. It has also deprived the Russian opposition of its most well-known politician and sparked a search for Navalny’s body, which his team said was not being returned to his family until official tests are done.
An official note handed to Navalny’s mother stated that he died at 2:17 p.m. local time Friday, Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokesperson said. She added that an employee of the prison colony said that Navalny’s body was taken to the nearby city of Salekhard as part of a probe into his death.
Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that Navalny’s mother had been told by prison officials that her son had perished due to “sudden death syndrome” when she arrived at his former penal colony Saturday with one of the politician’s lawyers.
When a lawyer and Navalny’s mother visited the morgue in Salekhard, it was closed, Navalny’s team wrote on their Telegram channel. The lawyer called the morgue and was told that Navalny’s body is not there, his team said. Another of Navalny’s lawyers went to Salekhard’s Investigative Committee and was told that the cause of Navalny’s death had not yet been established and that new investigations are being done with the results to be released next week, Yarmysh said.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, Yarmysh said, informed his team that the body would not be handed over to his relatives until those investigations had been completed.
