More than a week after passing away in an Arctic prison colony, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s remains was given to his mother, his team announced on Saturday.
The most well-known opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Navalny, passed away on February 16 in a harsh prison in northern Siberia.
He was serving a 19-year term for offenses that Putin’s detractors claimed were political payback for his oppositional activities.
“Alexei’s body was handed over to his mother,” a spokesperson for Navalny’s team, Kira Yarmysh said on X, formerly Twitter. “Many thanks to all those who demanded this with us.”
For a week, Russian officials had refused to give Lyudmila Navalnaya custody of her son’s body.
To get it, she had traveled to the closest community to the prison colony where Navalny perished—the village of Salekhard in the Yamalo-Nenets area.
Navalny’s group said on Friday that they had launched a lawsuit to claim the body. They said that if his mother had refused to allow a “secret” funeral, local officials had threatened to bury him on the jail property.
