The Russian Investigative Committee (COR) has extended the investigation into the death in prison last February of the opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, for which his family and the West hold the Kremlin directly responsible, according to what his coreligionists reported today on Telegram.
Investigators will continue their investigations for another ten days, according to the notification from the COR of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, in the Arctic Circle, where Navalny died.
“That is, At the moment, there is no information from the State about the causes of Navalny's death“commented Iván Zhdanov, Navalny's right-hand man, on his Telegram channel, where he published said document.
The committee initially declined to open a criminal case for the sudden death of the opponent, who had been transferred to the Lobo Polar prison in December after launching a campaign against the re-election of President Vladimir Putin.
That is, at the moment, there is no information from the State about the causes of Navalny's death.
According to the official note, signed by Major Justice Alexandr Varapáev, Now this provision has been annulled and on March 21 the investigation was reopened.
Varapaev was the one who pressured Navalny's mother, Lyudmila, to agree to bury her son secretly, which she categorically refused.
“We have had other cases in which people have died (in prison). Doesn't this happen in the US? It happens and not infrequently,” Putin said after being re-elected on March 17.
Putin, who pronounced the surname of his number one enemy for the first time, then assured that approved Navalny's swap days before he died.
“Believe me or not. The man who spoke to me had not finished the sentence and I already said: I agree. But unfortunately what happened happened,” he said.
He explained that someone who does not belong to the presidential administration – Navalny's allies mentioned the tycoon Román Abramovich – proposed to exchange the opponent for Russians imprisoned in European countries.
“But with one condition I accepted it: we exchange it, but that it doesn't come back again. That it stays there. But that's life,” he said.
The opposition's allies assure that It was Putin who decided to torpedo the exchange at the last minute, which also included American citizens.
“On February 16, 2024, Vladimir Putin killed Alexei Navalny. He killed him in a vile and cowardly manner in a distant Siberian prison, where Navalny was separated from the rest of the world, separated from his family and loved ones, and starved to death. and they tortured him,” they denounced.
Navalny, 47, spent a third of his three-year sentence in solitary confinement cells since his return to Moscow in 2021.
Tens of thousands of Russians attended Navalny's funeral in Moscow in early March in the largest protest against the Kremlin's repression and the war in Ukraine since its start in February 2022.
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