Navalny vomited and convulsed in prison before dying, his wife says

Berlin: Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, suffered from heavy vomiting and convulsions shortly before he died in an Arctic prison last year, according to what the organization he founded called new information it had collected.

His wife and political successor, Yulia Navalnaya, claimed on Wednesday that the details supported her accusation that Navalny had been poisoned on Russian government orders, though she did not provide direct evidence.

In a 15-minute video posted on social media, she described what she said was a photo of Navalny’s prison cell showing vomit on the floor on the day he died, as well as excerpts from what she said were official incident reports submitted by five prison officials. She also said that her team had obtained biological samples from Navalny’s body and sent them for analysis in two countries.

Navalnaya did not explain how her organization had obtained the documents she cited in the video, and their authenticity could not be independently verified. She also did not say how biological samples had been obtained or where exactly they had been tested, though she claimed that the results pointed to poisoning.

“Alexei was murdered,” she said, echoing the main assertion made by Navalny’s exiled organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, after his death. “More specifically, poisoned.”

The Kremlin spokesperson on Wednesday declined to comment on her latest assertions.

Navalny, the Russian government’s most prominent political opponent, died in a maximum-security prison in the Russian Arctic on Feb. 16, 2024, from what officials claimed were natural causes. He had been serving a three-decade sentence on extremism-related charges.

His imprisonment was widely seen in Russia and abroad as politically motivated, and he had persistently maintained his innocence in the cases against him.

International rights organizations and Western governments broadly agree that the Russian government is ultimately responsible for Navalny’s death because its agents poisoned him in 2020 and subjected him to inhumane conditions after jailing him the following year. But U.S. intelligence officials determined last year it was unlikely that the Kremlin had been directly involved in the events that led to his death.

Navalnaya asserted on Wednesday that the reports by prison officials said that Navalny’s health had suddenly deteriorated during a morning walk on the day of his death. He asked guards for help but received inadequate care, she said.

“He was not even taken to an infirmary; they just took him back to his cell No. 16,” Navalnaya said in the video, citing what she said were written testimonies submitted by prison guards to their superiors.

“Alexei lay down on the floor, pulled his legs up to his stomach and started groaning from pain,” she said. “He said that his chest and stomach were burning. Then he began to vomit.”

Navalnaya presented a photo of what she said was his cell, which showed part of the floor covered with large quantities of liquid resembling vomit.

By the time he was taken to the infirmary, Navalny had lost consciousness, Navalnaya said. Medical workers who arrived in an ambulance soon after pronounced him dead.

The preliminary cause of death logged by the medical workers was “sudden death syndrome,” Navalnaya said.