Mother of slain Alexei Navalny says she's blackmailed to bury her son silently

"I spent an entire day alone in the investigative committee building with detectives and criminologists. They only allowed my lawyer to join me in the afternoon. I was covertly driven to the morgue last night where they showed me Alexei," stated Ludmila Navalny, mother of the deceased oppositionist.

According to her, the law stipulates that "they should immediately return Alexei's body"; however, this has not yet been done. "Instead, they are blackmailing me, dictating the conditions of where, when, and how Alexei should be buried. This is unlawful", said the distressed woman.

Simultaneously, Alexei Navalny's press secretary Kira Yarmysh reported that in the medical findings supplied to Alexei Navalny's mother, it was substantiated that the "cause of death was natural".

In her recording, the woman disclosed that authorities want Alexei Navalny’s burial to be shrouded in secrecy. "They want to take me to a remote corner of the cemetery, to a fresh grave, and say: 'Here lies your son.' I do not accept this. I want everyone to have the opportunity to bid him farewell," she indicated. "I am recording this video because they have started to threaten me. They warn that if I don't agree to a covert funeral, they will interfere with my son's body," alerts Ludmila Navalny.

On the 16th of February, Russian prison services announced that Navalny had suddenly passed away in a penal colony in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in the Far North. He was "feeling ill" and "lost consciousness". Despite immediate emergency attention and resuscitation attempts, the oppositionist died, according to the prison services.

Just after the death of the Russian opposition activist, thousands of individuals took to the streets in many European cities. Public rallies were also set up in numerous Russian cities, which the Kremlin attempted to suppress without reservation. As per OVD-Info, a human rights monitoring organization, approximately 400 people have been detained during the various demonstrations in Russian cities so far.