The mother has seen Navalny’s dead body

Alexei Navalny’s mother Lyudmila Navalnaya says she has seen her son’s body, several news agencies report.

She states that the authorities want to bury Navalny’s body secretly.

Alexei Navalny died on February 16 in a Russian prison area north of the Arctic Circle, according to Russian authorities. But not until now have his relatives seen his body.

In a first statement after seeing her dead son, mother Navalnaya says the authorities are trying to pressure her to agree to their terms:

– They are trying to blackmail me, they are making demands about where, when and how Aleksej is to be buried. It is illegal, she says in a video recording that Navalny’s organization has distributed.

– They want (his funeral) to be carried out secretly, says Lyudmila Navalnaya on the recording.

The remains must have been moved to different places before being taken to the district hospital in Salechard, according to the newspaper Novaja Gazeta. But Navalny’s relatives and associates were refused access there, and on Monday the authorities announced that the remains had been sent on for a two-week long “chemical examination”.

The lawyer and opposition politician Alexei Navalny was one of President Vladimir Putin’s main political enemies. He has been imprisoned in Russia for three years, most of that time in a penal colony and at several times in solitary confinement.

A large number of governments in the West accuse Putin of bearing the ultimate responsibility for the death of Alexei Navalny. So does his wife Yulia Navalnaya.