Alexei Navalny’s mother has filed a lawsuit demanding the release of her son’s body, Russian state media reported Wednesday.
Lyudmila Navalnaya has been attempting to retrieve the opposition activist’s remains since Saturday following his death a day earlier in a penal colony. She has now filed a complaint concerning “illegal actions and decisions” with a court in the Arctic city of Salekhard disputing officials’ refusal to let her bury her son, according to TASS.
A closed-door hearing in the case is scheduled for March 4, the court said.
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Navalnaya’s legal filing comes after she made a public appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. “For the fifth day I can’t see him, they aren’t giving me his body, they aren’t even telling me where he is,” she said in a video at the Polar Wolf penal colony, where her son was reported dead on Feb. 16. “I am addressing you, Vladimir Putin. Resolving this issue depends only on you. Let me finally see my son. I demand that Alexei’s body be immediately handed over so that I can bury him humanely.”
Russian prison authorities said the jailed Kremlin critic lost consciousness after a walk last week where he was serving a three-decade sentence. They claimed that he was given urgent medical attention but he was unable to be saved. No official cause of death has yet been publicly released.
Navalnaya was told Saturday that her son had died from “sudden death syndrome,” Navalny’s team told Reuters, referring to a vague grouping of heart issues that lead to cardiac arrest and death. His team also claimed that Navalnaya was informed that his body had been taken to Salekhard—the town near the Polar Wolf complex—but that the town’s morgue was shut when she arrived. The morgue later told Navalny’s lawyer they didn’t have his body, his spokeswoman said.
Navalny’s widow, Yulia, released a video Monday accusing Putin of killing her husband and claimed his body was not being released to cover up the crime. “They are not handing it over,” she said. “Unfortunately, they are lying. They are waiting for the traces of Putin’s Novichok to disappear.” Navalny previously survived an assassination using the Soviet-era nerve agent in 2020 shortly before his incarceration in Russia began.
She did not provide evidence for the claim. Others have similarly blamed Putin for Navalny’s death. “Make no mistake, Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” President Joe Biden said, adding that there was “no doubt” that the opposition leader’s demise came as a “consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the “absolutely rabid” statements blaming Putin for Navalny’s death as “totally unacceptable.”
