2024-02-24T16:38:57+00:00
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/ Kira Yarmysh, the spokeswoman for the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, confirmed on Saturday that Navalny’s mother received the body of her son, who died in prison last week.
Yarmysh said she did not know whether the authorities would allow a funeral to be held “in the way the family wanted and Alexei deserved.”
On Friday, Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila, said investigators were refusing to remove his body from a morgue in the remote Arctic city of Salekhard until she agreed to bury him without a public funeral ceremony.
She said an official told her she had to agree because Navalny’s body had already begun to decompose.
Navalny’s aides said Saturday that authorities had threatened to bury him in the remote penal colony where he died unless his family agreed to their terms.
Russia’s prison service said Navalny, 47, lost consciousness and died suddenly last Friday.