Lyudmila Navalnaya, the mother of the dead Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, has been searching in vain for her son for days. A court will not hear the application to return the body until March.
The mother of Russian Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who died in custody, wants to have his body returned with a lawsuit – but the responsible court in the Siberian city of Salekhard doesn’t want to deal with it for another week and a half. The hearing on Lyudmila Navalnaya’s application has been scheduled for March 4 and will take place behind closed doors, reported the Russian state news agency Tass.
According to his team, the authorities had previously told Navalny’s relatives that the body would remain under lock and key for another two weeks due to “chemical tests.”
According to authorities, Navalny collapsed last Friday while walking in the prison camp north of the Arctic Circle. Attempts to resuscitate the prison officers were in vain, it is said. Navalny was only 47 at the time of death, but was weakened by a poison attack in 2020 and repeated solitary confinement in the camp.
The authorities are denying relatives access to Navalny’s body, despite international protests. His team, which accuses the Russian power apparatus of murder, sees this as an attempted cover-up. In Russia, more than 70,000 people have already signed a call for the body to be returned to relatives. Navalny’s mother Lyudmila personally asked Russian President Vladimir Putin in a video on Tuesday to see and bury her son as quickly as possible. So far there has been no reaction from the Kremlin.
Widow will speak in the EU Parliament next week
Alexei Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, is expected in the European Parliament next week. The 47-year-old will “speak to the world” at a plenary session in Strasbourg, said EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola on the social network X (formerly Twitter). According to parliamentary information, she is expected to speak next Wednesday around 11:30 a.m.
Navalnaya had already taken part in a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday, where new sanctions against Russia were announced. In a video message also published on Monday, the widow blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for Navalny’s death in the prison camp and announced that she would continue her husband’s fight against the Kremlin chief’s system.
