Navalny’s mother shown body and ‘blackmailed by authorities’ over funeral

Lyudmila Navalnaya says she was told to agree to secret burial as Kremlin appears to fear funeral turning into political action

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 her 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 threatened to let her son’s body rot unless he is buried in secret. “Time is not on your side, corpses decompose,” she was told.