In a 6-minute video posted on YouTube, Navalnaya accused Putin of holding her husband's body “hostage” and questioned the religiosity that Putin often displays.
On Friday, Navalny's mother, Lyudmila, said that investigators were refusing to remove his body from a morgue in the remote Arctic city of Salekhard before she agreed to bury him without a public funeral ceremony.
She stated that an official told her that she had to agree because Navalny's body had already begun to decompose.
Navalny's aides said on Saturday that the authorities had threatened to bury him in the remote penal colony, where he died, unless his family agreed to their conditions.
In the video clip, Yulia accused Putin of being personally responsible for the location of her husband's body and of “torturing” Navalny after his death, as he did during his life.
Navalnaya, who was wearing black, said: “We already knew that Putin’s faith was false. But now we see it more clearly than ever before.”
She added: “No true Christian could do what Putin is doing now with Alexei's body.”
She concluded the clip by saying: “Give us back my husband’s body. We want to hold a funeral and bury him in a humane way, in the ground, as is the custom in Orthodox Christianity.”
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