Russian authorities are still holding the body of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. His mother is also rejected again and again.

Lyudmila Navalnaya (right), Alexei Navalny's mother, leaves the Investigative Committee building in Salekhard Photo: Videostill/AP/dpa

MOSCOW taz | Lyudmila Navalnaya holds her documents firmly in her hand, walks along the snowy paths from Salekhard, in northwestern Siberia, and takes her lawyer's arm. Video recordings show Alexei Navalny's mother these days. It's cold behind the Arctic Circle, -27 degrees.

Here, behind the walls of “correctional colony number 3” in the village of Charp, the life of his son, Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, ended suddenly last Friday. The mother still does not know where his body is.

Lyudmila Navalnaya is not one to shy away from dealing with the authorities. She has known her for years. She spent hours in Russian courts and sat on wooden benches in corners. She listened and tried to understand what the judges were murmuring at the negotiations, what they were accusing Alyosha (Alexei's short name), the ray of hope for so many Russians.

There were so many absurd accusations that not even the lawyers could understand. The 69-year-old woman endured the State's humiliation against her son and avoided the public. Now she herself finds herself in the public eye that accompanies her in her tireless search for her boy's body.

More than 55,000 signatures

Under Russian law, prison authorities are obliged to return the body of a person who dies in custody to their relatives. This is what order number 93 of the Ministry of Justice of 2005 says. The order only allows two reasons for not doing so: if the detainee expresses it previously or if the relatives refuse to collect the body or do not find it at all.

Navalny's relatives are fighting for his release, as are more than 55,000 people in a petition. The authorities now speak of a “thorough examination of the body”; The cause of death “has not been clarified,” according to the investigative committee of the Russian Investigative Committee.

“Early in the morning, Alexei's mother and her lawyers arrived at the morgue. They were not allowed to enter. One of the lawyers was literally expelled. When asked if Alexei's body was there, the employees said nothing,” Navalny's press secretary Kira Yarmysch wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Ivan Zhdanov, head of Navalny's anti-corruption foundation FBK (declared “extremist” in Russia), recalls the cat-and-mouse game of the days after Navalny's poisoning in August 2020. Even then, deadlines were repeatedly extended , but Navalny The clothes were not published. “They say they are interested in getting everything done as quickly as possible. These unprincipled lackeys lie through their teeth. It's clear what they're doing now. Eliminate the traces of his crime,” he wrote in X.

Russian ambassador summoned

The Russian media portal Midzone Images released by surveillance cameras between Labytnangi and the regional capital, Salekhard. On the night of February 17, a convoy of prison authorities can be seen passing through this single entrance from Charp to Salekhard, across the frozen Ob River.

Journalists assume that Navalny's body was taken from the penal colony in a minibus of this convoy. The Kremlin said that “it was not the task of the presidential administration to deal with the issue of the return of a body.” “All measures required by law are being taken,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Russian ambassador on Monday. The politically motivated proceedings against Navalny and other opposition figures, as well as the inhumane prison conditions, show how brutal the Russian justice system is against dissidents, said a spokeswoman for Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens). Putin is trying to silence his own population.