Putin foe Alexei Navalny was ‘tightly tied up by the arms and legs’ four-to-five hours before he was declared dead, claims a new report.
Russian human rights organisation gulagu.net alleged a forensic expert who examined the corpse of the 47-year-old opposition leader has come under secret services pressure to hide his findings.
The initial Russian reports say Navalny died of a ‘detached blood clot’ in a hellhole Arctic prison – dubbed Polar Wolf – where he had been jailed in an act of political repression.
Now in a brief report, the organisation stated: ‘The forensic expert was pressured to conceal the discovery of blood clots….in the calf muscles and arms’.
This indicated ‘the formation of blood clots as a result of disruption of normal blood circulation’.
A new report has claimed that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was ‘tightly tied up by the arms and legs four to five hours before he died’ on February 16
Human rights activist and founder of Gulagu.net, a human rights organisation targeting corruption and torture in Russia, Vladimir Osechkin
The entrance to the Arctic IK-3 penal colony where Navalny had been held since December 2023
A source said that the forensic expert ‘was inclined to believe that four to five hours before the onset of biological death, the prisoner was tied up and his arms and legs’.
His limbs ‘were tightly tied just so that the blood stagnated and blood clots formed in it, which then clogged the pulmonary artery and blood vessels of the brain’, said a statement from the organisation, headed by Vladimir Osechkin.
No proof was offered for the allegation of direct physical abuse but Western leaders and other Russian opposition figures have already alleged Navalny was murdered on Vladimir Putin’s orders.
The forensic expert and the Investigative Committee investigators ‘are under intense pressure from the Federal Security Service (FSB) in order to obstruct the investigation’.
They are told to ‘conceal the circumstances of the commission of a particularly serious crime against Alexei Navalny – torture and contract killing’.
It is known that the Russian authorities have extended the deadline for a preliminary probe into the still unexplained death of the imprisoned Russian opposition leader.
The new date is April 20, according to Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.
Russian authorities have extended the deadline for a preliminary probe into Navalny’s death. Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, said the new date is April 20
The initial Russian reports say Navalny died of a ‘detached blood clot’ in a hellhole Arctic prison
This means ‘there is still no official information from the government about the cause of death’, he said.
The FSB has been accused of an earlier bid to murder Navalny by poisoning him with Novichok nerve agent.
Navalny suddenly died on February 16 in a remote Arctic penal colony, where he was serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges widely seen as politically motivated.
He had appeared on video shortly before his death and appeared healthy.
Russia’s penitentiary authorities initially said the politician ‘felt unwell’ and fainted after a walk in the prison yard, but no specific cause of death has been revealed to date.
Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Ivanovna, was shown a medical certificate stating that her son died of ‘natural causes’.
But following his death, she was handed her late son’s body after an agonising nine-day wait as she waited in Salekhard, near the grisly IK-3 Arctic penal colony where Navalny had been held since December.
Navalny spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said the Investigative Committee, the country’s top criminal investigation agency, informed Lyudmila Navalnaya that the official probe into the death had been extended.
‘They lie, buy time for themselves and do not even hide it,’ Yarmysh posted on X.
Yulia Navalnaya accused the Russian authorities of hiding Navalny’s body in order to wait for traces of the nerve agent to disappear.
Russian officials have vehemently denied that Navalny was murdered, and said at the time they would not release the body to the family for 14 days as investigators probed the hazy circumstances surrounding his death.
On March 1, a brief funeral was held in Moscow for the opposition leader as brave mourners paid their respects – despite fears of mass arrests
Relatives and friends pay their last respects at the coffin of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, March 1
Navalny was seen for the last time on February 15 (pictured), the day before he died
Navalny’s widow said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was ‘Satan’ for holding ‘hostage’ her late husband’s body.
Maria Pevchikh – an exiled ally of Navalny – said he was killed as moves were underway to swap him in a prisoner exchange.
Putin appeared to back the theory that Navalny might have been exchanged but said: ‘Unfortunately, whatever happened, happened’.
On March 1, a brief funeral was held in Moscow for the opposition leader as thousands of mourners gathered around his open casket.
Photos of the event displayed the coffin being carried past large crowds of mourners – some of which were holding red flowers – while they bravely congregated despite fears of mass arrests.
Brave mourners chanted ‘Navalny, Navalny!’ as the coffin was carried out of a black hearse and into a Russian Orthodox church – Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, and as the coffin was driven away less than an hour later, people again chanted: ‘Russia without Putin’, ‘Putin is a killer’ and ‘We won’t forget’.