'They are blackmailing me': Navalny's mother given 'three hours' to agree to secret burial
The mother of Alexei Navalny has said Russian investigators have told her she must agree to a secret burial or her son will be buried in a colony.
A spokeswoman for the family said that she had been given "three hours" to make the decision.
Lyudmila Navalnaya said that she has been resisting pressure from Russian authorities and has refused to negotiate with the Investigative Committee.
In a statement, her spokeswoman said: "They do not have the authority to decide how and where she should bury her son."
On Thursday she posted a video saying investigators had allowed her to see her son's body at the city morgue.
She said she had once again asked for his body to be turned over to her, claiming she was being forced to agree to a secret burial.
“They are blackmailing me, they are setting conditions where, when and how my son should be buried,” she said. “They want it to do it secretly without a mourning ceremony.”
Mr Navalny, known as Vladimir Putin's most recognisable opposition figure within Russian politics, suddenly died at an Arctic prison last week.
His death caused international outrage with several countries and activists stating he had been murdered by Mr Putin.
Mr Navalny's mother said she had spent nearly 24 hours in the morgue where officials told her that they had determined the cause of his death, and would reveal that to her only if she agreed to a private funeral.
Ms Navalnaya accused the authorities of threatening her: “Looking into my eyes, they say that if I do not agree to a secret funeral, they will do something with my son’s body. Investigator Voropayev openly told me: ‘Time is not on your side, the corpse is decomposing',” she said, reiterating her demand to release her son's body "immediately."
Mr Navalny’s death has deprived the Russian opposition of its best-known and most inspiring politician less than a month before an election that is all but certain to give Mr Putin another six years in power.
Many Russians had seen Mr Navalny as a rare hope for political change amid Putin’s unrelenting crackdown on the opposition.
Since Mr 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 OVD-Info, a group that monitors political arrests.
Authorities cordoned off some of the memorials to victims of Soviet repression across the country that were being used as sites to leave makeshift tributes to Mr Navalny.
Police removed the flowers at night, but more keep appearing.
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