Alexei Navalny’s mother says she has finally been allowed to see his body after his death at an Arctic penal colony last week—but authorities are now demanding that he be buried in secret, she says.
In a video released Thursday, Lyudmila Navalnaya detailed threats she said investigators were making against her in order to force her to agree to their terms.
“Yesterday evening, they secretly took me to the morgue, where they showed me Alexei,” she said.
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But instead of handing over the late Kremlin foe’s body for a burial, she said, investigators are “blackmailing” her and making demands about “where, when, and how Alexei should be buried.”
“They want it to be done secretly, without last respects,” she said, adding that their plan is to take her to the cemetery and “the fresh grave and say ‘Here lies your son.’”
“I won’t agree to that,” she said, adding that she wants people who “held Alexei dear” to have a chance to say goodbye to him.
“I am making this video because they’ve started to threaten me,” she said.
“Looking me in the eye, they told me if I don’t agree to a secret burial, they will do something with my son’s body,” she said. One investigator, she said, “openly told me, ‘Time is working against you, the body is decomposing.’”
“Investigators say they know the cause of death, they have all the medical and legal documents ready,” she said, adding that she had been shown the documents. The documents reportedly list a “natural” cause of death—despite the opposition leader having been poisoned by Kremlin henchmen and, according to himself and his allies, having been tormented behind bars for years.
