Russian media have obtained footage of a midnight convoy of cars, including vehicles from the Federal Penitentiary Service, reportedly rushing the body of the late politician Alexei Navalny from the jail where he was pronounced dead to the regional capital of Salekhard in the early hours of February 17, 2024.
Navalny, 47, was an anti-corruption activist who became among the Kremlin’s most outspoken critics leading the political opposition against the Russian president.
Navalny survived years of reprisals from the Russian government and a near-fatal poisoning before dying last week Friday of ‘sudden death syndrome’ in a penal colony, according to Russian prison authorities.
In a document handed to Navlany’s mother by prison officials, Navalny died on Friday at about 2.20pm local time
But live video analysed by the Russian independent outlet Mediazona shows a convoy of four vehicles driving down the ice road linking the town of Labytnangi with Salekhard at midnight.
Among them, a UAZ minibus believed to be carrying the corpse, as well as prison vehicles and two highway patrol police cars.
The motorcade crossed the frozen left bank of the Ob River on the day Navlany was alleged to have died.
The road stretch is the only route between IK-3, the prison Nalvany was being held at, and the Salekhard morgue.
One car alleged to belong to the Federal Security Service (FSB) security service escort is unmarked.
According to Mediazona, the footage was taken from a local internet provider’s website used for motorists to assess traffic and check for ferry queues and was the only time such a convoy made the journey in several days.
Before his death, Navalny was serving multiple prison sentences totalling several decades for embezzlement, fraud and so-called ‘extremism’ after returning to Russia from Germany in 2021.
Navalny’s spokeswoman confirmed his body was taken to Salekhard, a regional city close to the penal colony, and had yet to be released to his family.
A source told Novaya Gaeta Europe, a news outlet that replaced the suspended opposition newspaper of the same name, that Navalny’s ‘bruised’ body was taken to the Salekhard district clinical hospital morgue on Friday evening and as at press time no autopsy has been conducted.
A Salekhard paramedic added that Navalny’s injuries, which included a bruise on his chest, were consistent with a seizure or outside restraint during convulsions.
Such bruising may have been down to chest compressions during CPR.
‘That is, they did try to resuscitate him, and he probably died from cardiac arrest,’ they said.
Labytnang City Hospital said ambulance crews arrived at the prison within seven minutes and provided CPR on Navalny for half an hour.
Navlany’s family and supporters have accused Putin of killing Navalny, with campaigners saying the announcement of his death was ‘preplanned and coordinated’.
‘Three and a half years ago Putin tried to kill Aleksei,’ Kira Yarmysh, his spokeswoman, said on the day his death was announced, referring to the nerve agent poisoning in 2020.
‘Yesterday, he killed him.’
