Alexei Navalny's mother pleads for Vladimir Putin to return son's body

The mother of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has appealed to President Vladimir Putin to release her son's body.

Navalny, a critic of President Putin, was being held at a Siberian penal colony when his death was announced on Friday.

Russian officials said that Navalny had suffered "sudden death syndrome".

Navalny's mother Lyudmila Navalnaya has travelled to the prison where he died, but said she has not been allowed to see her son's body.

Appearing in a video outside the penal colony, Navalnaya said: “For the fifth day, I have been unable to see him.

"They wouldn’t release his body to me. And they’re not even telling me where he is.

"I’m reaching out to you, Vladimir Putin. The resolution of this matter depends solely on you. Let me finally see my son.

"I demand that Alexei’s body is released immediately, so that I can bury him like a human being.”

Navalny's team says Russian authorities have refused to release the body for the next two weeks as the preliminary inquest into his death continues.

Alexei Navalny's widow has claimed her husband was killed by nerve agent Novichok while in a Russian prison, ITV News Europe Editor James Mates reports

On Monday, Navalny’s widow, Yulia, released a video accusing Putin of killing her husband and alleged the refusal to release his body was part of a cover-up.

“They are cowardly and meanly hiding his body, refusing to give it to his mother and lying miserably,” she said.

Yulia Navalnaya's account on the social media platform X was briefly suspended, but was up an running again within a couple of hours.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the allegations of a cover-up, telling reporters that “these are absolutely unfounded, insolent accusations about the head of the Russian state.”

Navalny, 47, had been imprisoned since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from a nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin.

Since Navalny’s death, about 400 people have been detained across in Russia as they tried to pay tribute to him with flowers and candles, according to a group that monitors political arrests.

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