Navalny's family accuses Russian authorities of hiding his body

(Patria) - Alexei Navalny's mother has not been able to retrieve his body after his death in an Arctic prison, says a close associate of the dead Russian opposition leader, reports the BBC.

Kira Yarmysh said his mother, Lyudmila, was told that his body would only be handed over after an autopsy was completed. Navalny's team believes he was killed on Vladimir Putin's orders. Putin has not appeared publicly since the Russian prison service announced on Friday that Navalny had fallen ill and died in the remote IK-3 prison in the Arctic Circle. Shortly thereafter, the Kremlin said it was aware and that the president had been informed.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said it had rejected "biased and unrealistic" assessments of the cause of his death given during a meeting with British officials on Saturday.

Navalny was one of the most prominent faces of the Russian opposition to Putin's regime and was serving a sentence for politically motivated charges in the "Polar Wolf" penal colony in Kharp, about 1,900 km north of Moscow.

His mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, was reportedly told by the prison service that he died on Friday after collapsing and losing consciousness during a walk, his team said. She visited the colony on Saturday and received an official notice stating the time of death as 2:17 PM local time (09:17 GMT), Yarmysh said.

Another Navalny ally, Ivan Zhdanov, said the activist's mother was told he died of "sudden death syndrome" - a generic, vague term for a condition that causes sudden death from cardiac arrest with no apparent cause.

His team said his mother was told his body had been taken to the city of Salekhard, near the prison complex, but when she arrived, the morgue was closed.

Prison officials reportedly told her that the initial autopsy examination was inconclusive and that a second one would have to be performed.

His allies claim that Russian authorities are deliberately withholding his body so they can
"cover up the traces" and call for the body to be returned to his family "immediately".