HARP, Russia (Reuters) – Alexei Navalny’s spokeswoman confirmed on Saturday that Russia’s best-known opposition leader was dead, but said it was unclear where his body was taken as a morgue near the Arctic prison where he died said that they didn’t receive the body.
Navalny, a 47-year-old former lawyer, collapsed and died on Friday after a walk at the Polar Wolf penal colony in Kharp, about 1,900 km (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow, where he was serving a three-decade sentence. sentence, the prison service said.
Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said that official notification of the death had been given to Navalny’s mother, Lyudumila. According to the notice, the time of death, according to her, was at 14:17 local time (09:17 GMT) on February 16.
“We demand that the body of Alexei Navalny be immediately handed over to his family,” Yarmysh said.
Until now, Friday’s prison service statement had been the only official announcement of the death of Navalny, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin.
Yarmysh, on social media site X, reported that a prison official said Navalny’s body was taken to Salekhard, a city next to the prison complex, by Russian investigators who were conducting an “investigation.”
When Navalny’s lawyer and Navalny’s mother Lyudmila arrived at the morgue in Salekhard, they found it closed and were sure that Navalny’s body was not there, Yarmysh said.
“It is closed, despite the colony’s assurances that it is working and that Navalny’s body is there,” Yarmysh said.
“The lawyer called the phone number on the door. He was told that he was the seventh person to call today. Alexei’s body is not in the morgue.”
An employee at the only morgue in Salekhard told Reuters that Navalny’s body had not arrived.
“The investigative committee has a million options,” said the employee, who did not give her name, listing other cities in the region – Labytnangi, Nadym and Urengoy – where Navalny’s body could have been sent.
“We have the only morgue in Salekhard,” he said. “I didn’t receive anyone, no bodies… no documents.”
Asked whether the body could have arrived before he started his shift at 8 a.m., the employee replied: “Nobody gave me anything. I think if such a body had been delivered to us, they would have told me right away.”
Lyudmila Navalnaya went on Saturday to the prison where her son was being held, accompanied by Navalny’s lawyer, Novaya Gazeta reports.
Correctional colony IK-3 in Kharp is located above the Arctic Circle, about an hour’s drive from Salekhard, the administrative capital of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
Western leaders and officials expressed outrage at Navalny’s death, which deprived Russian critics of Putin of their most formidable leader.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the West’s reaction unacceptable on Friday.
In Moscow, death left a mood of despair and apathy. Hundreds of flowers and candles laid in the capital on Friday in Navalny’s memory were mostly taken away overnight in black bags.
Several dozen roses and carnations remained covered Saturday in melting snow at a monument to victims of Soviet repression that lies in the shadow of the former KGB headquarters on Lubyanka Square in central Moscow.