Navalny's body 'FOUND and shows signs of bruising' (2024)

Alexei Navalny's body reportedly shows signs of bruising that were caused by being held down while he suffered a seizure, raising fears that he was killed on the orders of Vladimir Putin.

The wounds are consistent with the Russian opposition leader - who died aged 47 on Friday amid claims he was 'murdered' by Vladimir Putin's regime - having suffered a 'seizure', according to independent outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe.

The news outlet spoke to a paramedic in the Salekhard ambulance service, close to the IK-3 penal colony, also known as 'Polar Wolf', where Navalny was being held.

Paramedics found bruises on Navalny's body, which is now under police guard in a morgue at Salekhard district clinical hospital, according to the independent news outlet.

'Usually the bodies of people who die in prison are taken straight to the Bureau of Forensic Medicine on Glazkova Street, but in this case it was taken to the clinical hospital for some reason,' the anonymous paramedic told the outlet.

'As an experienced paramedic, I can say that the injuries described by those who saw them appeared to be from convulsions.

'If a person is convulsing and others try to hold him down but the convulsions are very strong, then bruising appears. They also said he had a bruise on his chest — the kind that comes from indirect cardiac massage.

'So they did try to resuscitate him, and he probably died of cardiac arrest,' the paramedic said, adding: 'But nobody is saying anything about why he had a cardiac arrest.'

An autopsy has not been carried out yet, according to the outlet.

Earlier, Navalny's mother was wrongly informed that the politician's body was at the main morgue in Salekhard.

Now the family has been told that the cause of death has not been established and his body cannot yet be passed to relatives for burial.

Details of Navalny's passing are few and far between, and those that have been made public have contradicted each other.

It was most recently reported that Navalny died of 'sudden death syndrome', but no details were given to back this claim up.

Just two minutes after the time Navalny was reported to have died - 2.17pm - Russia's prison service put out a statement revealing his passing.

Four minutes after this, a Telegram channel controlled by the Kremlin claimed he had died of a blood clot, and just seven minutes later Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, was talking to the media about it.

On top of this, Kremlin officials are alleged to have told the opposition leader's mother that he died from 'sudden death syndrome' as she visited the brutal IK-3 Polar Wolf penal colony where he was being held yesterday.

Navalny's allies say they were denied the opportunity to see the body, which would remain with the authorities until an investigation was complete.

Navalny's lawyer, who arrived in the town of Salekhard with Navalny's mother on Saturday, was allegedly told by the prison that the body was being held in the morgue.

But a contact at the Salekhard morgue later denied the body was there - leaving yet more question marks around the shock death of one of Putin's most fierce critics.

'It's obvious that the killers want to cover their tracks and are therefore not handing over Alexei's body, hiding it even from his mother,' his team said in a post on Telegram.

Yesterday it was claimed that FSB officers visited the prison Navalny was being kept in just a few days before he died.

Two intelligence officers allegedly disconnected some CCTV and recording devices at Polar Wolf, according to Russian human rights campaign group gulagu.net.

Though the site isn't known for its reliability, it was the first group to break the news that Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner Group was recruiting mercenaries from Russian prisons.

The world has condemned Navalny's suspicious death, and states across the globe have called for an independent investigation into how he died.

Yesterday, US president Joe Biden said there was 'no doubt' Vladimir Putin was to blame for Navalny's death.

He said that the US was looking into a 'number of options' to punish Russia.

In 2021, Biden said he told Putin that the consequences of Navalny's death would be 'devastating for Russia.'

The US ambassador to Moscow visited a makeshift shrine to Alexei Navalny on Sunday, as Russian authorities suppressed memorials and tributes to the late opposition leader.

Rights groups say police have detained over 400 people at gatherings for the politician, a leading critic of President Vladimir Putin who died in an Arctic prison Friday.

Ambassador Lynne Tracy was pictured on Sunday at the Solovetsky Stone, a monument to political repression that has become a major site of tributes for Navalny.

'Today at the Solovetsky Stone we mourn the death of Alexei Navalny and other victims of political repression in Russia,' the US embassy in Moscow said on social media.

'We extend our deepest condolences to Alexei Navalny's family, colleagues and supporters. His strength is an inspiring example. We honour his memory,' it said.

At a separate makeshift memorial known as the 'Wall of Grief', a bronze monument to Soviet-era repression, police had set up fences in a bid to ward off mourners.

Several dozen police officers could be seen standing nearby, but some people were allowed to enter through the fence and lay flowers, an AFP reporter saw.

In more than a dozen cities, police had detained 401 people by Saturday night, according to the OVD-Info rights group that tracks political arrests and provides legal aid.

More than 200 arrests were made in St Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, the group said.

Among those detained there was Grigory Mikhnov-Voitenko, a priest of the Apostolic Orthodox Church - a religious group independent of the Russian Orthodox Church - who announced plans on social media to hold a memorial service for Mr Navalny and was arrested on Saturday morning outside his home.

He was charged with organising a rally and placed in a police holding cell, but was later taken to hospital after suffering a stroke, OVD-Info reported.

Courts in St Petersburg have ordered 42 of those detained on Friday to serve from one to six days in jail, while nine others were fined, court officials said.

In Moscow, at least six people were ordered to serve 15 days in jail, according to OVD-Info. One person was also jailed in the southern city of Krasnodar and two more in the city of Bryansk, the group said.

The UK, meanwhile, has threatened to impose another set of sanctions against Russia in the wake of Navalny's death.

Lord Cameron, the foreign secretary, joined other G7 ministers at the Munich Security Conference in calling on Russia to 'fully clarify' how the jailed opposition leader died, amid mounting pressure on Western leaders to respond.

TheForeign Secretary used the German gathering to repeat the UK's call for countries to seize Russian central bank assets currently held in the West as one way of financing the reconstruction of Ukraine.

It comes as the second anniversary of the Russian invasion approaches, marked by confirmation that Putin's forces have taken complete control of the frontline city of Avdiivka.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky joined Western leaders in putting the blame on Moscow for the death of Mr Navalny, as he pointed to the demise of the Putin critic as another reminder of the importance of defeating Russia.

'There should be consequences,' the Foreign Secretary told broadcasters on Saturday.

'When appalling human rights outrages like this take place, what we do is we look at whether there are individual people that are responsible and whether there are individual measures and actions we can take.

'We don't announce them in advance, so I can't say anymore than that.

'But that is what we will be looking at.'

More to follow.