The body of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been handed over to his mother, according to one of his senior aides.
In a post on Telegram, Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, thanked “everyone” who urged Russian authorities to return Navalny’s body to his mother.
It followed Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya accusing Vladimir Putin of “torturing” his corpse.
She said in a video message: “You tortured him alive, and now you keep torturing him dead. You mock the remains of the dead.”
Navalny died on February 16 aged 47 in an Arctic penal colony in mysterious circumstances. A Russian medical report points to natural causes as the reason for his death.
Prominent Russians released videos calling on authorities to release the body and Western nations have hit Russia with more sanctions as punishment for Navalny’s death as well as for the second anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine.
47, Russia‘s most well-known opposition politician, unexpectedly
Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, has been in the Arctic region of Salekhard – close to where the prison is located – for more than a week, demanding that Russian authorities return the body of her son to her.
Earlier on Saturday, Navalny’s widow said in a video that Navalny’s mother was being “literally tortured” by authorities who had threatened to bury Navalny in the Arctic prison.
They, she said, suggested to his mother that she did not have much time to make a decision because the body is decomposing, Navalnaya said.
“Give us the body of my husband,” Navalnaya said earlier Saturday. “You tortured him alive, and now you keep torturing him dead. You mock the remains of the dead.”
Authorities have detained scores of people as they seek to suppress any major outpouring of sympathy for Putin’s fiercest foe before the presidential election he is almost certain to win.
Saturday marked nine days since the opposition leader’s death, a day when Orthodox Christians hold a memorial service.
People from across Russia came out to mark the occasion and honour Navalny’s memory by gathering at Orthodox churches, leaving flowers at public monuments or holding one-person protests.
As of Saturday evening, at least 38 people had been detained in Russia for showing support for Navalny, according to the OVD-Info rights group that tracks political arrests.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected allegations that Putin was involved in Navalny’s death, calling them “absolutely unfounded, insolent accusations about the head of the Russian state.”
