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For the mom of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition chief who died at age 47 in an Arctic penal colony, the journey to get well her son’s physique Saturday was an odyssey with no clear vacation spot.
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In the long run, she didn’t get what she got here for.
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Lyudmila Navalnaya, 69, acquired an official notice Saturday stating that the politician had died in jail at 2:17 p.m. native time a day earlier, Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokesperson stated Saturday.
Along with members of Navalny’s authorized group, Lyudmila travelled to the city of Kharp within the Yamalo-Nenets area, some 1,900 kilometres northeast of Moscow.
It was there that Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service stated Friday that Navalny felt unwell after a stroll and fell unconscious. When Lyudmila arrived lower than 24 hours later, officers stated that her son had died from “sudden demise syndrome,” stated Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Basis. He didn’t elaborate.
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Navalny’s demise eliminated the Russian opposition’s most well-known and galvanizing politician lower than a month earlier than an election that can give President Vladimir Putin one other six years in energy.
Jail workers instructed Navalny’s mom Saturday that they didn’t have her son’s physique. They stated it had been taken to the close by metropolis of Salekhard, a bit over an hour’s drive away, as a part of a probe into his demise.
When Lyudmila arrived within the city with certainly one of Navalny’s attorneys, nonetheless, they discovered that the morgue was closed, Navalny’s group wrote on their Telegram channel. When the lawyer referred to as the morgue, they have been instructed that the politician’s physique was not there both.
This time, Lyudmila headed on to Salekhard’s Investigative Committee workplace. A small group of journalists watched as Lyudmila walked towards the workplace, wearing a thick black coat as temperatures hovered near minus 25 levels Celsius (minus 13 levels Fahrenheit). Often, she took the arm of a kind of strolling subsequent to her because the group made their method alongside paths edged with thick piles of snow.
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Right here, she was instructed that the reason for her son’s demise had, in truth, not but been established, stated Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh. Officers instructed Lyudmila that the politician’s kinfolk wouldn’t obtain his physique till they’d accomplished further examinations.
Initially, it appeared as if Lyudmila would possibly head to a different morgue. As a substitute, she returned to her resort within the city of Labytnangi, one other 30-minute drive. Navalny’s group, in the meantime, stated they have been nonetheless no nearer to discovering out the place the politician’s physique was being held.
“It’s apparent that they’re mendacity and doing all the things they’ll to keep away from handing over the physique,” Yarmysh wrote on X, previously referred to as Twitter, after Lyudmila’s go to to the Investigative Committee workplace. The spokesperson additionally stated that Navalny’s group “demand that Alexei Navalny’s physique be handed over to his household instantly.”
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Navalny, who had been serving a 19-year jail time period since January 2021 after being convicted 3 times for extremism, has spoken a number of occasions about whether or not he would possibly die whereas in custody.
After the final verdict, which Navalny believed to be politically motivated, he stated that he understood he was “serving a life sentence, which is measured by the size of my life or the size of lifetime of this regime.”
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