Vladimir Putin’s team have given a new reason for Alexei Navalny’s death, claiming the 47-year-old simply dropped dead.
Since Navalny’s death many have speculated on how he was killed with US president Joe Biden saying it was likely a consequence of something “[Vladimir] Putin and his thugs did”.
Workers at the prison he was being held in initially said Navalny died after feeling “unwell after a walk, almost immediately losing consciousness”, but now prison authorities have put forward another story.
They have now claimed he simply dropped dead as a result of the extremely rare “sudden death syndrome”.
Navalny had been serving time in the “Polar Wolf” penal colony on charges of extremism, which are generally believed to have been fabricated due to his fierce criticism of Putin.
On Saturday, Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, described it as “murder” when announcing his death.
She said: “We knew that there was a risk, Alexei knew it as well. And yesterday [Friday] they murdered him as they planned to do it three years ago.”
His mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, was informed by authorities that her son had died on February 16 at 2.17pm, local time.
Meanwhile, Ivan Zhdanov, an ally of the dissident, claimed on Twitter on Saturday that Navalny’s mother and lawyer had been told by officials at the penal colony he was being held that his death was the result of “sudden death syndrome”.
Sudden death syndrome is the name given to different cardiac syndromes that cause sudden cardiac arrest and death.
The British Heart Foundation describes it as sudden arrhythmic death syndrome, which is also known as SADS, which is when someone dies suddenly and unexpectedly from a cardiac arrest, but the cause of the cardiac arrest cannot be found.
It says this usually happens when an abnormal heart rhythm, known as an arrhythmia, goes untreated, and that it can be undetectable after death because the heart will appear normal.
Navalny’s body is still yet to be released by Russian authorities.
