Alexei Navalny’s body released to his mother after she refused to negotiate over funeral ultimatum
The body of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been handed over to his mother, his spokesperson has said.
“Alexei’s body was given to his mother. Thank you very much to everyone who demanded this with us,” Kira Yarmysh wrote on X.
Details of his funeral were yet to come, she said, adding it was unclear if the Russian authorities would “interfere” or if it would be carried out as “the family wants and Alexei deserves”.
“We will provide information as it becomes available,” she said.
Mr Navalny’s mother Lyudmila Navalnaya was given an ultimatum yesterday, with officials saying the Kremlin critic would be buried in the penal colony where he died unless she agreed within three hours to lay him to rest without a public funeral.
Ms Navalnaya refused to negotiate with investigators because “they do not have the authority to decide how and where she should bury her son”, Ms Yarmysh said.
Mr Navalny was the most well known critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and campaigned against official corruption. He also led major anti-Kremlin protests.
His death in the penal colony on 16 February prompted mourners across Russia to attend memorials with flowers and candles. Hundreds were arrested.
While the cause of his death remains unknown, Western leaders including US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have made clear they hold Mr Putin responsible.
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From 22 February: Alexei Navalny’s mother shares update on son’s body.
Mr Navanly’s widow Yulia Navalnaya and his mother also blame the Russian regime for the death of the 47-year-old activist.
Earlier on Saturday, Yulia Navalnaya accused Mr Putin of mocking Christianity by trying to force Mr Navalny’s mother to agree to a secret funeral for her son.
“No true Christian could ever do what Putin is now doing with the body of Alexei,” she said, adding: “What will you do with his corpse? How low will you sink to mock the man you murdered?”
The widow also said in a video released on Saturday that his mother had been “literally tortured” by officials who threatened to bury her son in the Arctic prison.
She said the authorities suggested to Mr Navalny’s mother that she didn’t have much time to make a decision because his body was decomposing.
“Give us the body of my husband,” Ms Navalnaya said. “You tortured him alive, and now you keep torturing him dead. You mock the remains of the dead.”
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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his wife Yulia attend a Moscow court hearing in 2015
On Thursday his mother said investigators had allowed her to see her son’s body in the morgue in the Arctic city of Salekhard.
She filed a lawsuit at a court in Salekhard contesting officials’ refusal to release the body, and a closed-door hearing had been scheduled for 4 March.
On Friday, Mr Navalny’s daughter Dasha shared a photo of her with her parents as a child, and the message: “I love you, kiss you, hug you tightly, and miss you very, very much.”
It was her first direct tribute to her father since his death was confirmed a week ago.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has rejected allegations that Mr Putin was involved in Mr Navalny’s death, calling them “absolutely unfounded, insolent accusations about the head of the Russian state”.
Saturday marks nine days since the opposition leader’s death, a day when Orthodox Christians hold a memorial service.
Residents of several Russian cities came out to mark the occasion and honour Mr Navalny’s memory by leaving flowers at public monuments or holding one-person protests.
At least 27 had been detained in nine Russian cities by 12.45pm local time on Saturday, according to the OVD-Info rights group.
Sky News has obtained shocking CCTV from inside the main hospital in the city of Sweida in southern Syria – where our team found more than 90 corpses laid out in the grounds following a week of intense fighting.
Warning this article shows images of a shooting
The CCTV images show men in army fatigues shooting dead a volunteer dressed in medical scrubs at point-blank range while a crowd of other terrified health workers are held at gunpoint with their hands in the air.
The mainly Druze city of Sweida was the scene of nearly a week of violent clashes, looting and executions last month which plunged the new authorities into their worst crisis since the toppling of the country’s former dictator Bashar al Assad.
The new Syrian government troops were accused of partaking in the atrocities they were sent in to quell between the Druze minority and the Arab Bedouin minority groups.
The government troops were forced to withdraw when Israeli jets entered the fray, saying they were protecting the Druze minority and bombed army targets in Sweida and the capital Damascus.
Men in military fatigues enter the hospital.
The hospital volunteer is seen on the floor moments before he was shot
A second man fires with a handgun
Days of bloodletting ensued, with multiple Arab tribes, Druze militia and armed gangs engaging in pitched battles and looting before a ceasefire was agreed.
The government troops then set up checkpoints and barricades encircling Sweida to prevent the Arab tribes re-entering.
The extrajudicial killing captured on CCTV inside the Sweida hospital is corroborated by eyewitnesses we spoke to who were among the group, as well as other medics in the hospital and a number of survivors and patients.
Body bags in the grounds of hospital
The CCTV is date- and time-stamped as mid-afternoon on 16 July and the different camera angles show the men (who tell the hospital workers they are government troops) marauding through the hospital; and in at least one case, smashing the CCTV cameras with the butt of a rifle.
One of the nurses present, who requested anonymity, told us: “They told us if we talked about the shooting or showed any film, we’d be killed too. I thought I was going to die.”
Dr Obeida Abu Fakher, a doctor who was in the operating section at the time, told us: “They told us they were the new Syrian army and interior police. We cannot have peace with these people. They are terrorists.”
Read more:
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A destroyed ambulance in Sweida
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Multiple patients and survivors told us when we visited the hospital last month that government troops had participated in the horror which swept through Sweida for days but this is the first visual evidence that some took part in atrocities inside the main hospital.
In other images, one of the men can be seen smashing the CCTV camera with the butt of his rifle – and another is wearing a black sweater which appears to be the uniform associated with the country’s interior security.
One survivor calling himself Mustafa Sehnawi, an American citizen from New Jersey, told us: “It’s the government who sent those troops, it’s the government of Syria who killed those people… we need help.”
Mustafa Sehnawi speaks to Sky’s Alex Crawford
A destroyed tank in Sweida
The government responded with a statement from the interior ministry saying they would be investigating the incident which they “denounced and condemned” in the strongest terms.
The statement went on to promise all those involved would be “held accountable” and punished.
The new Syrian president Ahmed al Sharaa is due to attend the United Nations General Assembly next month in New York – the first time a Syrian leader has attended since 1967 – and what happened in Sweida is certain to be among the urgent topics of discussion.
A funeral was held for five Al Jazeera journalists who were targeted by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Sunday night, as the UN said the killings were a “grave breach of international law”.
Correspondents Anas Al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Moamen Aliwa, and their assistant Mohammed Noufal, died after a strike on a tent near Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
The Israeli military defended the attack, claiming the most prominent of the group, Sharif, was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell and only “posed as a journalist” – claims consistently denied by Sharif himself, Al Jazeera and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
A sixth journalist – a freelancer called Mohammad al Khaldi – was also killed in the strike, medics at the Al Shifa Hospital told Reuters.
Mourners attend the funeral of the Al Jazeera journalists. Pic: Reuters
Al Jazeera called the killing of its journalists a “targeted assassination” and described its employees as some of the “last remaining voices within Gaza”.
Read more:
Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza
Al Jazeera condemns ‘assassination’ of its journalists in Gaza
Al Jazeera staff members gather at the network’s studios, to remember their colleagues. Pic: Reuters
“Al Jazeera Media Network condemns in the strongest terms the targeted assassination of its correspondents… by the Israeli occupation forces in yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom,” the broadcaster said.
“This attack comes amid the catastrophic consequences of the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, which has seen the relentless slaughter of civilians, forced starvation, and the obliteration of entire communities.
“The order to assassinate Anas Al-Sharif, one of Gaza’s bravest journalists, and his colleagues, is a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza.”
The United Nations (UN) secretary-general condemned the killing of the five journalists and called for it to be investigated.
Mourners carry the body of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif.
Pic: Reuters
A spokesperson said in a media briefing: “These latest killings highlight the extreme risks that journalists continue to face when covering this ongoing conflict.
“The secretary-general calls for an independent, impartial investigation into these latest killings.”
He added that “at least” 242 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began.
The UN’s human rights office condemned the killings earlier on Monday, labelling the strike by Israel a “grave breach of international humanitarian law”.
The war began on 7 October in 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel and killed 1,200 people, taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli numbers.
Of the 50 hostages still in Gaza, Israeli authorities say 20 are still alive.
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Israel’s offensive has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to health officials in Hamas-run Gaza.
It comes as prominent journalists across media organisations continue to join calls for access to Gaza, which Israel has forbidden throughout the war.
On Sunday, Palestinian envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour said Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should let the UN Security Council into Gaza.
“Take journalists with you so that you can verify exactly what is happening in Gaza,” he said.
The targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif and four other colleagues by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) late on Sunday silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza.
The IDF wasted no time in releasing a statement claiming it had “eliminated” Al-Sharif, calling him a “terrorist” who “posed” as a journalist for Al Jazeera.
Gaza latest: Follow live updates
The Committee to Protect Journalists warned in July that Al-Sharif was the victim of an Israeli smear campaign and that they feared for his safety.
The IDF had previously released documents which they say proved his involvement with Hamas.
Gazan journalist Anas Al-Sharif leaves behind a wife and two children
No word from them on his colleagues – Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa – who they also killed. We are chasing.
Al-Sharif’s death – and that of his four colleagues – is a chilling message to the journalistic community both on the ground and elsewhere ahead of Israel’s impending push into Gaza City.
There will now be fewer journalists left to cover that story, and – if it is even possible – they will be that bit more fearful.
This is how journalists are silenced. Israel knows this full well.
It has also not allowed international journalists independent access to enter Gaza to report on the war.
Al-Sharif’s death has sent shockwaves across the region, where he was a household name. He was prolific on social media and had a huge following.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
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I was watching horrifying footage of the immediate aftermath of the strike in the taxi on my way into the bureau, and the driver told me how he and his family had all cried for Anas when the news came in.
His little daughter cried because of Al-Sharif’s little daughter, Sham, who she knew from social media.
“They call everyone Hamas,” my taxi driver said. “Men, women, children”.
Last month, Al-Sharif wrote this post: “I haven’t stopped covering [the crisis] for a moment in 21 months, and today I say it outright… and with indescribable pain.
“I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment… Gaza is dying. And we die with it.”
This is what journalists in Gaza are facing, every single day.
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