Moscow [Russia], February 27: The team of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who died in custody, says it wants to organize a public funeral service in Moscow by Friday.
"We are looking for a hall for Alexei's public farewell," his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on Monday on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. The planned date is the end of the current working week, she added.
Navalny died on February 16 in the prison camp with the unofficial name "Polar Wolf" in the Siberian Arctic region of Yamal, Russian authorities said. The circumstances of his death remain unclear.
Russia's leading critic of the regime of President Vladimir Putin, weakened by a poison attack and repeated solitary confinement in the camp, is said to have collapsed while exercising in the icy prison yard and died despite attempts to resuscitate him.
According to Navalny's team, the death certificate mentions "natural" causes. Lyudmila Navalnaya, Navalny's mother, has accused Russian authorities of having tried to pressure her to bury her son in secret, which she refused to do. (DPA)
Source: Qatar Tribune