Vasily Dubkov, lawyer for Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who accompanied Navalny’s mother last week as she fought to get authorities to hand over her son’s body, was briefly detained on Tuesday in Moscow, Russian news media said.
Dubkov later told independent news outlet Verstka that he had been released. Verstka said he did not comment on the reason for his detention but said it was an obstruction of his activity as a lawyer.
She had earlier accused investigators of trying to “blackmail” her by withholding the body unless she agreed to bury it without a public funeral, which she refused to accept.
Navalny’s spokeswoman said earlier on Tuesday that his team had so far been unable to find any funeral hall or other venue where people could come to pay their respects to him. She said one venue had told them that “funeral agencies were prohibited from working with us.”
Navalny, 47, had been serving a sentence of more than three decades on fraud and extremism charges he said were trumped up to silence him.
Three of Navalny’s lawyers were arrested last October on suspicion of belonging to an “extremist group,” and two others have been placed on a wanted list.
With Dubkov’s help, Navalny’s mother Lyudmila succeeded in obtaining the release of her son’s body last Saturday, eight days after he died suddenly in an Arctic penal colony.❗️One of late Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny’s lawyers, Vasily Dubkov, was detained in Moscow on Tuesday for “disrupting public order”, sources told Novaya Europe.
— Novaya Gazeta Europe (@novayagazeta_en) February 27, 2024
Dubkov accompanied Navalny’s mother Lyudmila to the Arctic city of Salekhard after Navalny’s death on… pic.twitter.com/wZe32u4ww4
She had earlier accused investigators of trying to “blackmail” her by withholding the body unless she agreed to bury it without a public funeral, which she refused to accept.
Navalny’s spokeswoman said earlier on Tuesday that his team had so far been unable to find any funeral hall or other venue where people could come to pay their respects to him. She said one venue had told them that “funeral agencies were prohibited from working with us.”
Navalny, 47, had been serving a sentence of more than three decades on fraud and extremism charges he said were trumped up to silence him.
Three of Navalny’s lawyers were arrested last October on suspicion of belonging to an “extremist group,” and two others have been placed on a wanted list.
Source: Reuters
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