MOSCOW.- For the mother of Alexei Navalny, Russian opposition leader who died at age 47 in an Arctic penal colony, the journey to recover his son’s body on Saturday became an odyssey with no clear destination. In the end, he didn’t get what he wanted.
Lyudmila Navalnaya, 69, received an official note on Saturday stating that the politician had died in prison the day before at 2:17 p.m., said Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokeswoman.
Together with members of Navalny’s legal team, Lyudmila traveled to the town of Kharp in the Yamalo-Nenets region, about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.
It was there that Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service declared on Friday that Navalny felt unwell after a walk and fell unconscious. When Lyudmila arrived less than 24 hours later, officials said her son had died of “sudden death syndrome,” said Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. He did not give further details.
Navalny’s death eliminated the best-known and most inspiring politician of the Russian opposition less than a month before elections that will give President Vladimir Putin another six years in power.
On Saturday, prison officials informed Navalni’s mother that they did not have her son’s body. They explained that he had been transferred to the nearby town of Salekhard, just over an hour’s drive away, as part of an investigation into his death.
However, when Lyudmila arrived in the city with one of Navalny’s lawyers, they found that the morgue was closed, Navalny’s team wrote on their Telegram channel. When the lawyer called the morgue, they were told that the politician’s body was not there either.
This time, Lyudmila headed straight to the office of the Salekhard Investigative Committee. A small group of journalists watched as Lyudmila walked to the office, dressed in a thick black coat, with temperatures hovering around minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit). From time to time, she would take the arm of one of those walking beside her as the group advanced along paths lined with thick piles of snow.
There they told him that, in fact, the cause of his son’s death had not yet been established, stated Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh. Officials told Lyudmila that the politician’s relatives will not receive his body until they complete additional examinations.
At first, it seemed that Lyudmila would head to another morgue. Instead, she returned to her hotel in the town of Labytnangi, another 30-minute drive away. Navalny’s team, for its part, said they were still no closer to knowing where the politician’s body was located.
Source: With information from AP
