Media: Bruises Found On Navalny's Body

This was reported by the ambulance doctors.

The death of Alexei Navalny in the IK-3 maximum security prison located in the village of Harp became the main topic of discussion for the residents of Salekhard, the capital of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the sources of Novaya Gazeta Europe say.

"Salekhard is not such a large town, a little more than 50,000 residents, and therefore those who have been living here for at least a couple of decades make friends in various fields of activity," said Dmitry, a native of Salekhard. "Therefore, it is very difficult to keep something secret from the locals here. Especially when it comes to a global event, like the death of a world-class politician."

According to Novaya Gazeta's source, Navalny's body was first taken to Labytnangi, but on the evening of February 16, it was taken to the Salekhard District Clinical Hospital on Mira Street.

"Usually the bodies of the dead in the colonies are delivered immediately to the Bureau of Forensic Examination on Glazkov Street, but then they were taken for some reason to the clinical clinic," said an employee of the Salekhard Ambulance Station, he works in a building (like the crematorium building) that's located within 500 meters from the hospital. "They took me to the morgue, brought me in, and then two policemen stood in front of the door. They would have hung a poster with the inscription 'Something Mysterious Is Here!' Of course, everyone wanted to know what happened, reasons for the secrecy and whether they were trying to hide something serious. The people began to figure out what was happening by any means possible.

It quickly became clear that the body of the politician had been brought in and that the death was "not of a criminal nature", that is, without gunshot wounds. Then it was reported that local pathologists were forbidden to do an autopsy."

"Here, opinions differed for the first time," said an ambulance member. "Some said that there was an instruction from Moscow to wait for the specialists from the capital city, while others claimed that the doctors themselves refused to perform the autopsy. After all, it is a political matter, and it is unclear how it will change further. And if you do an autopsy and there is a direct order to make changes to the result, you will not be able to get away. Then they can also blame you. If the autopsy was not carried out, then there was no one to ask. Besides, it's winter now, the bodies can just be stored in the corridor for weeks. He opened the front door wider instead of a refrigerator (In Salekhard now minus 27 - Ed.).

Sources from the ambulance reported that bruises were found on Navalny's body, which he received during his lifetime. Not from beatings, but as a result of other actions.

"As an ambulance officer with quite a lot of experience, I can say that such bruises, as those who saw them described, appear from convulsions," says the medic with the ambulance. "A person convulses and harms himself, they try to hold him, and convulsions are very strong, so bruises appear." People also said that he also had a bruise on his chest. But one that appears in connection with an indirect heart massage.

That is, they tried to reanimate him, and he most likely died of cardiac arrest. But why did this cardiac arrest happen, no one told anything so far.

After the poisoning of Navalny in 2020, resuscitator Mikhail Fremderman listed in the BBC commentary the symptoms of the use of the Novichok military poisonous substance on a person: "Such substances increase the content of acetylcholine in the body, one of the main mediators in the body. It, in turn, begins to strongly affect the muscles, breathing, muscle tone, pressure, and heart function. Regulation of the work of the internals and the neuromuscular system is disturbed. A person loses consciousness and may have convulsions, and a coma develops quickly. Some types can even be applied to the skin and a person gets severe poisoning,” Fremderman listed.

According to the interlocutor of Novaya Gazeta Europe, neither on February 16 nor on February 17, an autopsy was carried out. Probably, therefore, the Russian authorities cannot yet establish the exact cause of death and do not allow relatives to the body.

It is possible that experts from Moscow are waiting in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Only two flights usually arrive in Salekhard from Moscow: at 8 am and at 4:40 pm.

However, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe, Andrei, who works as a taxi driver mainly in the airport-cit direction in the evening of February 17, two out-of-schedule planes landed: "Small planes, often different oligarchs come to us to hunt. The first jet landed at about six in the evening, it was met by cars of the Investigative Committee. And the second one arrived in an hour and a half. I personally did not see who arrived, but my colleagues said that eight people got out of the plane and went to the airport building. And someone took them away, because the passengers of the taxi on the evening of February 17 were just arriving by regular planes."

Experts could arrive on the second special flight, who should conduct an autopsy. Since some biomaterials can be sent for research to Moscow, the process will take several more days. This means that the body will not be handed over to relatives for at least a week.