Within the final identified video of Alexey Navalny shot at some point earlier than his demise on Friday, the lanky, fair-haired 47-year-old seems to be gaunt and cracks jokes.
Navalny was filmed by way of a video hyperlink from the IK-3 penal colony, also referred to as the Polar Wolf jail, within the Arctic city of Harp throughout a video convention with a choose within the metropolis of Vladimir some 600 kilometres south.
“I want you to replenish my [prisoner] account from your huge salary of a federal judge,” Navalny, clad in a black jail uniform, mentioned, laughing sarcastically from behind bars, in line with the grainy video.
A day later, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken opponent fainted and fell after a stroll, and was pronounced useless two hours later, regardless of “numerous resuscitation attempts,” jail officers mentioned.
The reason for demise is “being established,” they mentioned.
The Kremlin-funded RT tv channel claimed he had a blood clot, however Navalny’s supporters, Kremlin critics and observers have been unanimous in claiming that he had been murdered.
“They killed him. Even if not on that very day, several years of torture is also a way of killing,” Sergei Biziukin, a fugitive opposition activist from the western metropolis of Ryazan, advised Al Jazeera.
“Of course, this is a murder. He had been tortured to death for years,” Gennady Gudkov, a former intelligence officer turned opposition chief, advised Al Jazeera.
Navalny’s deputy blamed Putin for Navalny’s “murder.”
“Specifically, it was Putin who killed him,” Ivan Zhdanov, who changed Navalny as head of the Fund to Struggle Corruption, a gaggle that uncovered corruption, labored with opposition activists and as soon as had branches all through Russia, mentioned in a video.
Navalny’s mom mentioned her son confirmed no indicators of sickness. “I saw him in the jail on February 12. He was alive, healthy, optimistic,” Lyudmila Navalnaya wrote on Fb late on Friday.
For greater than three years, Navalny was locked in a number of Russian jails – the place he complained of extreme again ache that made his toes numb and of “torture with insomnia” due to fixed shiny gentle in his cell.
Of the 37 months of his jail time, he spent 296 days in solitary confinement in box-like concrete cells the place prisoners will not be allowed to lie down in the course of the day and may solely sit on a bench that’s 14 centimetres excessive and has no again to lean upon, his attorneys mentioned.
“Navalny died as a result of murder – a premeditated murder, a methodically executed murder, a murder the Russian state is to blame for,” OVD Data, a human rights group that has been monitoring arrests and persecution of Kremlin critics, mentioned in a press release late on Friday.
“There’s no need to poison or kill him in some other violent way – one just has to wait,” it mentioned.
However Navalny was beforehand poisoned.
In July 2019, he was hospitalised with an “acute allergic reaction,” swellings and a rush, Russian medical docs mentioned, however by no means launched the trigger.
Navalny and his private physician mentioned he had no allergy symptoms and the “reaction” was brought on by an unspecified poison.
A 12 months later, whereas on a aircraft over Siberia, he collapsed, fell right into a coma and was rushed to a hospital after an emergency touchdown after which flown to a German clinic.
A conclave of German specialists concluded Navalny had been poisoned with a uncommon and costly nerve agent from the Novichok household of poisons developed within the USSR.
Navalny’s crew and unbiased reporters mentioned that they had recognized the purported poisoners, a gaggle of Russian intelligence officers, and Navalny known as considered one of them pretending to be a safety official.
The officer, recognized as Konstantin Kudryavtsev, advised him the nerve agent was utilized to the politician’s underwear, in line with their dialog’s recording Navalny launched. The Kremlin denied these claims.
After months of rehabilitation in Germany, he returned to Russia, was instantly arrested and stood a number of trials that his supporters, rights teams and Western governments known as Kremlin-orchestrated.
He was serving three sentences, together with a 19-year jail time period for “extremism,” however remained the most important thorn in Putin’s aspect. Regardless of arrests and emigration of its members, his Fund to Struggle Corruption saved releasing investigative studies detailing corruption within the Kremlin halls of energy.
Navalny remained lively on social media with sarcastic posts ridiculing Putin and calling his full-scale invasion of Ukraine a “nightmare”.
His final Fb publish was dated February 14, Valentine’s Day, and addressed his spouse Yulia “whom he loved more and more”.
Despite the fact that Putin amended Russia’s structure to “nullify” his earlier phrases and run for re-election in March 2024, analysts consider that he noticed Navalny as one of many greatest threats to his energy. In a February 1 publish on Fb, Navalny urged Russians to point out up at polling stations “exactly at noon” to vote in opposition to Putin.
“Navalny’s death, unfortunately, was predictable from the moment he took a plane to Moscow,” Nikolay Mitrokhin of Germany’s Bremen College advised Al Jazeera.
His demise embodies the totalitarian practices that advanced beneath Putin and resembles these of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, he mentioned. “Today’s Russia is not even South Africa of the 1960s. One can’t leave prison the way [apartheid critic Nelson] Mandela did,” Mitrokhin mentioned.
“Here, they kill in prison. Especially the bright and unbreakable ones.”
The reported reason behind demise seems to be suspicious, in line with well being professionals.
A reanimation skilled who had helped Navalny get well from the 2020 poisoning, mentioned that the RT tv channel’s declare that Navalny died of a blood clot is fake.
“To diagnose it, there has to be an examination of the living [patient] that, as we know, has not been conducted,” Alexander Polupan advised The Insider, an unbiased on-line journal, late on Friday. “Or such a diagnosis is made according to the results of an autopsy” that has not been carried out but.
“That’s why making such a diagnosis is like pointing a finger in the sky,” he was quoted as saying. “It is surprising a propaganda [ media outlet] had this version ready.”
A former jail official turned human rights activist claimed that jail docs usually resort to the “blood clot” analysis to explain suspicious causes of demise.
“This is a universal diagnosis that is hard to prove and somewhat useful,” Anna Karetnikova was quoted by the Meduza publication as saying.