Alexei Navalny's body to be held for 2 weeks for 'chemical analysis,' Russian authorities inform family

Alexei Navalny's family has been told that his body will not be released for another two weeks after they were denied access for the third time yesterday.

The Kremlin critic died last week in a Russian prison owing to "health reasons," a cause that has led many to raise eyebrows.

Navalny's mother Lyudmila has been told by authorities that his son's body is being held for "chemical analysis," one of his representatives said.

Meanwhile, the whereabouts of Navalny's body are still unknown despite the family's efforts to recover it.

Navalny's widow cries foul

Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya in a video message, said that Russia is deliberately hiding her husband's body.

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"They are cowardly and meanly hiding his body, refusing to give it to his mother," she said.

Navalnaya, who lives in exile, also accused Russian officials of "lying miserably while waiting for the trace of another Putin's Novichok to disappear." Novichok is a poison that Russia has allegedly used to carry out a previous politically motivated assassination attempt.

The widow urged Russians "to share not only the grief and endless pain that has enveloped and gripped us — but also my rage," and vowed to continue her husband's work to reveal Russian President Vladimir Putin's "misdeeds".

Meanwhile, Navalny's spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh last week said, "It’s obvious that the killers want to cover their tracks and are therefore not handing over Alexei’s body, hiding it even from his mother.”

His team further said that upon arriving at the local morgue in the town of Salekhard where Navalny’s body was supposedly kept, Navalny’s lawyer and mother Lyudmila learned that the body was not there.