Procedures planned in advance?
Organization questions official version of Navalny’s death
February 18, 2024, 8:54 a.m
When the news went around the world that Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny had died in a Russian prison camp, it was immediately clear to many: it was murder. A Russian human rights group is now compiling some points that suggest planned action.
A Russian human rights group has compiled numerous evidence that supports the suspicion that Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was murdered in a prison camp in northern Russia. According to a statement from Gulagu.net, a group that focuses on the rights of prisoners in Russia, there are some oddities shortly before and immediately after Navalny’s death.
Navalny’s mother has not yet been able to identify her dead son; the body has disappeared.
(Photo: REUTERS)
According to the organization, two days before the dissident’s death, officials from the Russian secret service FSB visited prison camp number three in Charp in northern Russia. Navalny was transferred there in December. Gulagu.net speculates that the FSB people switched off or dismantled listening devices and hidden cameras that “could have recorded what happened to Alexei Navalny on February 15th.” The visit was mentioned in a report from a branch of the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
In one Telegram entry Gulagu.net also compiled a chronology of events on the anniversary of Navalny’s death. According to the official Russian statement, the 47-year-old’s death is said to have occurred at 2:17 p.m. local time (10:17 a.m. CET). Just two minutes later, the Federal Penitentiary Service for the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug published a press release about this on the official website. It says that Navalny felt unwell after a walk and then lost consciousness.
Search for answers
At 2:20 p.m., the state agencies RIA Novosti and ITAR-TASS spread the news of Navalny’s death. Accordingly, “all necessary resuscitation measures were carried out on the “convict Navalny” without any positive results. The ambulance crew declared the convict dead,” Tass quotes from the prison service’s message. At 2:23 p.m., the state-controlled Telegram channel 112 stated that the dissident’s probable cause of death was a blood clot. According to the organization, an autopsy could not have actually taken place at this point. The morgue responsible for the penal colony is located in Salekhard, almost 50 kilometers away. Less than a quarter of an hour after Navalny’s death, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed at 2:30 p.m. that President Vladimir Putin had been informed of Navalny’s death.
From the quick reaction of the Russian official authorities, the organization concludes that these processes were planned in advance. In the Telegram entry, Gulagu.net also formulates some questions that concern Navalny’s final hours. Among other things, questions are being asked about how long Navalny was in the prison yard when the temperature was minus 20 degrees Celsius and why he was there even though he should have had his lunch in the cell during this time.
According to the organization, it is also unclear why there are no recordings from the camp’s surveillance cameras over the period in question and how Navalny returned to his cell. “Did he get there alone or was he carried from the training ground on a blanket?” According to the human rights group, the expert who ultimately conducted the autopsy was verbally instructed on the evening of February 16 to describe bruises on Navalny’s body as postmortem. Accordingly, they would only have been created after his death. However, it is assumed that the dissident was ill-treated in custody.
Where is the body?
In previous cases, Gulagu.net’s information was not always accurate, but the website was the first to report that Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was recruiting mercenaries in Russian prisons. This was later confirmed.
Even after Navalny’s death, there are some inconsistencies. Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, received official news in the prison camp that her son was dead. However, there was initially no trace of Navalny’s body. An employee of the prison camp beyond the Arctic Circle said that Navalny’s body was in the city of Salekhard for examination, said his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysch. The mother was therefore unable to identify the body personally. The cause of death is also still unclear.
The morgue in Salekhard apparently gives contradictory information. One of Navalny’s lawyers was told that the body was not in Salekhard, another that the cause of death was not yet known and that another histological examination had been carried out, the results of which were expected next week, according to Yarmysch.