MOSCOW.- The mother of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny filed a lawsuit in a court in the Arctic city of Salekhard over the authorities’ refusal to hand over her son’s body, the Russian state news agency Tass reported Wednesday.
A closed-door hearing has been set for March 4, according to the information, which cited judicial officials.
Since Saturday, Lyudmila Navalnaya has been trying to recover the body of her son, who died in a penal colony in the far north of the country a day earlier. According to Navalny’s team, she has not been able to find out where her body is located.
On Tuesday, Navalnaya asked the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, to hand over her son’s remains so that he could be buried with dignity.
“I haven’t been able to see him for five days. They have not given me his body. And they don’t even tell me where it is,” Navalnaya, 69, dressed all in black, said in the video recorded outside the wired compound of Penal Colony No. 3 in Kharp, about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow. .
“I am addressing you, Vladimir Putin. The resolution of this matter depends solely on you. Let me finally see my son. I demand that Alexei’s body be released immediately, so that he can be buried like a human being,” he states in the video posted on social media by Navalny’s team.
Russian authorities have said that the cause of the opponent’s death is currently unknown and have refused to hand over his remains for the next two weeks, while preliminary investigations continue, members of Navalny’s team indicated.
They accuse the government of trying to hide the evidence. On Monday, Navalny’s widow, Yulia, released a video accusing Putin of murdering her husband and noted that his refusal to hand over her body was part of a cover-up.
“They are hiding his body in a cowardly and mean way, refusing to give it to his mother and lying miserably,” he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the allegations of a cover-up, telling reporters that “these are absolutely baseless and insolent accusations against the Russian head of state.”
Navalny’s death left the Russian opposition without its most well-known and inspiring politician less than a month before a general election that will almost certainly give Putin another six-year term. It was a devastating blow to many Russians, who had seen Navalny as a rare hope for political change in the face of Putin’s relentless crackdown on the opposition.
Since Navalny’s death, some 400 people have been detained by police in Russia when they went to monuments in his memory or in remembrance of victims of political repression with candles and flowers to honor the opponent, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors politically motivated arrests. Authorities cordoned off some of the monuments across the country and removed flowers at night, although they continued to appear.
Several of the men arrested at the Navalny memorials were also ordered to report to their local military recruiting office, where Russian authorities recruit volunteer soldiers and update records of those eligible for service, according to Go by the Forest, an activist group that helps Russians avoid military service.
Peskov claimed that police were acting “according to the law” in detaining those honoring Navalny.
More than 60,000 people petitioned the Russian government to return Navalny’s remains to his relatives, according to OVD-Info.
Source: With information from AP
