The widow of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya, demanded authorities on Saturday to release his body for burial, describing President Vladimir Putin as "diabolical" and claiming he "torments" her husband in death as he did in life. In a six-minute video posted on YouTube, Navalnaya accused Putin of holding her husband's body "hostage" and questioned the sincerity of Putin’s religious beliefs often displayed.
Yulia accused Putin of being personally responsible for the location of her husband's body and of "torturing" Navalny after his death as he had in life. Dressed in black, Navalnaya stated: "We already knew that Putin's faith was false, but now we see it more clearly than ever." She added: "No true Christian could do what Putin is doing now with Alexei's body."
Navalnaya concluded the video by saying: "Return my husband's body to us. We want to hold a funeral and bury him in a humane way, in the ground, as is customary in Orthodox Christianity." Navalny's aides stated on Saturday that authorities threatened to bury him in the remote penal colony where he died unless his family agreed to their terms.
On Friday, Navalny's mother, Lyudmila, stated that investigators refused to release his body from the morgue in the remote city of Salekhard in the Arctic until she agreed to bury him without a public funeral. She reported that an official told her she needed to agree because Navalny's body was already starting to decompose.
