Moscow: The wife of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalny, demanded the Russian authorities to release her husband's body to bury him. On Saturday, she accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of torturing Alexei's corpse, Reuters reported.
She made her demand through a YouTube video, in which she further accused Putin of holding her husband's body hostage. She questioned Putin's Christian faith, which he used to profess.
Yulia said that in her husband's case, Putin is personally involved and responsible for the whereabouts of his body. She said that it's already known that Putin's faith is fake, but now it is seen more clearly. No true Christian could do what Putin is doing with Alexei's body, she lamented.
Yulia continued that Aelxeiu was a devoted Christian and attended church. She said that he took fast on Lent even when he was in prison, adding that his political activism stemmed from Christian values, Reuters reports.
In the video, she asked to give her husband's body so that she could hold a funeral service for him and bury him in a humane way, as customary in Orthodox Christianity.
On Friday, Navalny's mother, Lyudmila, said that Russian investigators were refusing to release his body, which is kept in a morgue in the remote Arctic city of Salekhard. She said that they are demanding that the body must be buried without a public funeral. Also, an official had told her that she must agree to the Russian investigator's demand because Alexei's body is already decomposing.
Further, on Saturday, Navalny's aides also said that the authorities are threatening that they will bury him near the prison where he died if he won't agree with their terms.