Navalny's mother says she has been shown his body and 'blackmailed by authorities’ over funeral
Navalny's mother says she has been shown his body and 'blackmailed by authorities’ over funeral
Navalny's mother says she has been shown his body - BBC News
In a video message on Thursday, Lyudmila Navalnaya said she was driven to a morgue on Wednesday evening where authorities showed her the body.
Navalnaya said she recorded the video because she was being threatened into agreeing to a secret funeral for her son and that the authorities refused to give his body unless she agreed to their terms.
“They want it to be done secretly, without a goodbye. They want to bring me to the edge of the cemetery, to a fresh grave and say: ‘Here lies your son.’ I don’t agree to that,” she said.
“They say that if I don’t agree to a secret burial, they will do something with my son’s body.”
Navalnaya said the investigators told her: “Time is not on your side, the corpse decomposes.”
The Kremlin appears to be trying to make sure Navalny’s funeral does not turn into a public show of support for the opposition leader.
“Authorities fear Navalny’s funeral could turn into a political action,” wrote Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.