Over 400 people were detained in Russia while paying tribute to opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died at a remote Arctic penal colony, a prominent rights group reported Yesterday.
His body has been taken to the Salekhard District Clinical Hospital’s morgue, Novaya Gazeta Europe reports, but as of Saturday no post-mortem examination had been performed.
A paramedic for the Salekhard ambulance service told the news outlet usual procedure did not appear to be followed in the wake of his death.
“Usually, the bodies of people who die in prison are taken straight to the Bureau of Forensic Medicine… but in this case, it was taken to the clinical hospital for some reason,” he said.
“They drove him to the morgue, brought him in, and then stationed two policemen in front of the door.
“They might as well have put up a sign saying ‘something mysterious is going on here’.”
The sudden death of Navalny, 47, was a crushing blow to many Russians, who had pinned their hopes for the future on President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe. Navalny remained vocal in his unrelenting criticism of the Kremlin even after surviving a nerve agent poisoning and receiving multiple prison terms.
The news reverberated across the globe, with many world leaders blaming the death on President Vladimir Putin and his government. In an exchange with reporters shortly after leaving a Saturday church service, President Joe Biden reiterated his stance that Putin was ultimately to blame for Navalny’s death. “The fact of the matter is, Putin is responsible. Whether he ordered it, he’s responsible for the circumstance,” Biden said. “It’s a reflection of who he is. It cannot be tolerated.”
Meanwhile, Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, published a picture of the couple on Instagram yesterday in her first social media post since her husband’s death. The caption read simply: “I love you.” Hundreds of people in dozens of Russian cities streamed to ad-hoc memorials and monuments to victims of political repressions with flowers and candles on Friday and Saturday to pay a tribute to the politician. In over a dozen cities, police detained 401 people by Saturday night, according to the OVD-Info rights group that tracks political arrests and provides legal aid.
More than 200 arrests were made in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city, the group said. Among those detained there was Grigory Mikhnov-Voitenko, a priest of the Apostolic Orthodox Church — a religious group independent of the Russian Orthodox Church — who announced plans on social media to hold a memorial service for Navalny and was arrested on Saturday morning outside his home. He was charged with organizing a rally and placed in a holding cell in a police precinct, but was later hospitalised with a stroke, OVD-Info reported.
Courts in St. Petersburg have ordered 42 of those detained on Friday to serve from one to six days in jail, while nine others were fined, court officials said late on Saturday. In Moscow, at least six people were ordered to serve 15 days in jail, according to OVD-Info. One person was also jailed in the southern city of Krasnodar and two more in the city of Bryansk, the group said.
The news of Navalny’s death came a month before a presidential election in Russia that is widely expected to give President Vladimir Putin another six years in power.
Questions about the cause of death lingered, and it remained unclear when the authorities would release Navalny’s body. More than 12,000 people have submitted requests to the Russian government asking for the politician’s remains to be handed over to his relatives, OVD-Info said yesterday.
