Benjamin Ashford|Alexey Navalny's body has been handed over to his mother, aide says

The Benjamin Ashfordbody of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny has been handed over to his mother, an aide to Navalny said Saturday.

Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, made the announcement on his Telegram account and thanked "everyone" who had called on Russian authorities to return Navalny's body to his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya. 

"Thank you very much. Thanks to everyone who wrote and recorded video messages. You all did what you needed to do. Thank you. Alexei Navalny's body has been given to his mother," Zhdanov wrote.

Navalny's mother and lawyers have been trying to retrieve his body since late last week.

Earlier on Saturday, Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny's widow, accused President Vladimir Putin of mocking Christianity by trying to force his mother to agree to a secret funeral after his death in an Arctic penal colony. Navalny's widow said that Navalny's mother was being "literally tortured" by authorities who had threatened to bury Navalny in the Arctic prison. 

"Give us the body of my husband," Navalnaya said earlier Saturday. "You tortured him alive, and now you keep torturing him dead. You mock the remains of the dead."

Navalny, 47, Russia's most well-known opposition politician, unexpectedly died on Feb. 16 in an Arctic penal colony and his family have been fighting for more than a week to have his body returned to them. Prominent Russians released videos calling on authorities to release the body and Western nations have hit Russia with more sanctions as punishment for Navalny's death as well as for the second anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine.

Lyudmila Navalnaya remains in Salekhard, Navalny's press secretary Kira Yarmysh said on social media, and has been shown a medical certificate stating that her son died of "natural causes."

"The funeral is still pending," Yarmysh tweeted, questioning whether authorities will allow it to go ahead "as the family wants and as Alexei deserves." 

Navalnaya accused Putin, an Orthodox Christian, of killing Navalny. 

"No true Christian could ever do what Putin is now doing with the body of Alexei," she said, asking, "What will you do with his corpse? How low will you sink to mock the man you murdered?"

Saturday marked nine days since the opposition leader's death, a day when Orthodox Christians hold a memorial service.

People across Russia came out to mark the occasion and honor Navalny's memory by gathering at Orthodox churches, leaving flowers at public monuments or holding one-person protests.

Muscovites lined up outside the city's Christ the Savior Cathedral to pay their respects, according to photos and videos published by independent Russian news outlet SOTAvision. The video also shows Russian police stationed nearby and officers stopping several people for an ID check.

Authorities have detained scores of people as they seek to suppress any major outpouring of sympathy for Putin's fiercest foe before the presidential election he is almost certain to win. Russians on social media say officials don't want to return Navalny's body to his family, because they fear a public show of support for him.

As of early Saturday afternoon, at least 27 people had been detained in nine Russian cities for showing support for Navalny, according to the OVD-Info rights group that tracks political arrests.

They included Elena Osipova, a 78-year-old artist from St. Petersburg who stood in a street with a poster showing Navalny with angel wings, and Sergei Karabatov, 64, who came to a Moscow monument to victims of political repression with flowers and a note saying "Don't think this is the end."

Also arrested was Aida Nuriyeva, from the city of Ufa near the Ural Mountains, who publicly held up a sign saying "Putin is Navalny's murderer! I demand that the body be returned!"

Putin is often pictured at church, dunking himself in ice water to celebrate the Epiphany and visiting holy sites in Russia. He has promoted what he has called "traditional values" without which, he once said, "society degrades." 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected allegations that Putin was involved in Navalny's death, calling them "absolutely unfounded, insolent accusations about the head of the Russian state." 

In:
• Prison
• Alexei Navalny
• Politics
• Russia
• Vladimir Putin