Kremlin accused of ‘covering tracks’ as whereabouts of Alexei Navalny’s body remain uncertain

Vigils were held across Russia after Alexei Navalny’s death in custody, including tributes paid to him near the memorial for political prisoners in St Petersburg. Photograph: Anatoly Maltsev/EPA

Alexei Navalny’s allies have accused the Kremlin of “covering their tracks” as, two days after the imprisoned opposition leader’s death in custody, uncertainty continued to surround the whereabouts of his body and what it may reveal about how he died.

Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, and his lawyer travelled over the weekend to the notorious “Polar Wolf” IK-3 penal colony in Russia’s Arctic north, where Navalny had been held since last year, to track down his body, but received contradicting information from various institutions over its location and left without recovering or seeing her son.