Assistant Ivan Zhdanov, director of the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation, said Lyudmila Navalnaya refused to submit to the demands of the Investigative Committee. Law enforcement relentlessly pursued Navalny while he was alive, with repeated criminal trials that independent analysts said were fabricated for the purpose of political revenge.
Instead, Navalnaya, 69, insisted on her legal right to claim her son's body from the morgue in the Arctic city of Salekhard, where it had been held for more than a week, and bring it to Moscow for burial.
This week, she signed his death certificate, in which authorities said Navalny died of “natural causes.” His family and team say he was murdered and that authorities withheld the body to cover up evidence.
President Biden and other leaders have said Russian President Vladimir Putin is “responsible” for Navalny’s death, and as punishment, the United States on Friday announced a new series of sanctions against Russian companies, entities and individuals. On Thursday, Biden met with Navalny's widow and daughter, Yulia and Daria Navalnaya, in California.
The Russian authorities' refusal to hand over the body, a position apparently aimed at preventing a public funeral that could attract a large crowd of political opposition supporters, has sparked shock and condemnation. Nearly 93,000 Russians signed a petition submitted by the legal rights group OVD-Info calling on Russian authorities to hand over the body to the family.
Navalny died suddenly on February 16 in the Polar Wolf prison colony in the Yamalo-Nenets region, just above the Arctic Circle. The previous day, he had appeared in court via video link, appearing to be in good health and good spirits.
Burying Navalny in this remote prison would deprive his family and supporters of the opportunity to say goodbye. It would also prevent his grave from becoming a place where Russians could pay tribute to his courage in opposing Putin and campaigning for a free, democratic Russia, which he often called the “beautiful Russia of the future.”
The new pressure on Navalny's mother comes after her almost surreal week-long ordeal to retrieve her son's body from Investigative Committee officials. She issued two video appeals, one directly to Putin, but they were ignored.
Zhdanov, Navalny's former aide, said Navalnaya rejected the ultimatum to bury her son secretly, because “they have no authority to decide how and where her son will be buried.” “She insists that the authorities allow the funeral and memorial services to be held in accordance with custom.”
Zhdanov said Navalnaya asked investigators to abide by laws requiring them to hand over her body by Saturday. On Friday, I also submitted a request to the Investigative Committee to open a criminal case against the investigators. Her son often said that the investigation committee was investigating itself and laughed at this absurdity.
On Friday, a military holiday in Russia known as Defender of the Fatherland Day, Putin laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown on the Kremlin wall. The Russian leader, who was careful to never utter Navalny's name, did not comment on his death.
Navalnaya said Thursday that an investigator threatened her that if she did not agree to a secret burial, he would allow her son's body to decompose.
On Thursday and Friday, dozens of Russian celebrities, writers, activists, artists, musicians, historians and actors recorded video clips demanding that Putin hand over Navalny's body to his mother and allow her to bury him according to Russian traditions.
Among them were dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov and two Nobel laureates: Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov and Belarusian Literature Prize laureate Svetlana Alekseevich. Some expressed their sadness and pain, others their anger.
Muratov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta. He said It was “embarrassing” to even talk about demanding the extradition of Navalny's body in a country with Christian values.
“Let us bow down and hand over the body to Lyudmila Ivanovna and the family – without any conditions,” he said.
“My name is Mikhail Baryshnikovsaid the famous Russian dancer and choreographer. “I strongly request that the body of the deceased Alexei Navalny be returned to his mother.”
“I want to go not only to the Kremlin” Alekseevich He said. “I want to ask all people, all of us: Speak, speak, say that the body should be given to the mother, to the wife, to the children. The dead also have rights.”
Dmitry GlukhovskyThe Russian author of the Metro trilogy, Putin, has called for the body of the “innocently murdered” opposition leader to be handed over to Navalnaya.
“By procrastinating, you are only proving that what happened was murder,” Glukhovsky said. “By procrastinating, you are further proving your weakness. Prepare the dead body and give it a decent burial.”
One of the founders of the artistic protest group Pussy Riot, Nadia Tolokonnikova“I did to her the worst thing that can happen to a human being: a mother seeing her child dead,” he said.
“Years ago, we were imprisoned on charges of trampling on traditional values,” Tolokonnikova said, referring to her arrest in 2012 for a protest performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. He added, “But no one tramples traditional values in Russia more than you, Putin, your officials, and your popes, who pray for all the murders you commit year after year, day after day.”
She added: “Putin, have a conscience.” “Give the mother her son's body.”
The refusal of the Russian authorities to allow public burials reminds us of the treatment faced by the families of dissidents who died in prisons during the Soviet era. Anatoly Marchenko, the last Soviet dissident to die in prison, died at the age of 48 in 1986 in the Chistopol prison colony in Tatarstan, after a hunger strike to demand the release of all political prisoners.
Soviet authorities refused repeated requests from his widow Larisa Bogoraz to bring her husband's body to Moscow, and he was buried in a village cemetery with Orthodox rites near the prison with his family and five friends present.
His death later led to the large-scale release of political prisoners by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
When another charismatic Russian opposition figure, Boris Nemtsov, was shot dead on a bridge near the Kremlin in 2015, his body was placed in an open coffin at the Sakharov Center – named after the late Soviet-era dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Andrei Sakharov. – as supporters praised. A Russian court closed the center in August.
Nemtsov was buried at Troekurovsky cemetery, where Navalnaya also wants to bury her son. Navalny wanted to attend Nemtsov's burial, but he was being held in prison in one of several criminal cases against him, and his request to attend was denied.
Natasha Abakumova contributed to this report.
