As Mr Navalny's mother takes legal action to recover his body, Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to hold those responsible to account.
Britain has imposed sanctions on six officials overseeing the Arctic penal colony where Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died.
The sanctions, announced by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron on Wednesday, target the warden and five deputy wardens of the IK-3 penal colony in Harup, Russia's Yamal-Nenets region, who now face a ban from entering the UK. and their assets will be confiscated. frozen.
“We must have no illusions about those responsible for Mr Navalny's brutal treatment. We will hold them to account,” Cameron said.
“It is clear that the Russian authorities considered Mr. Navalny a threat and repeatedly tried to silence him.”
Britain's Foreign Office said it was the first country to impose sanctions following Navalny's death, saying he had “exposed corruption in the Russian system, advocated for free and open politics, and supported the maintenance of state power.” He described him as a “political prisoner who dedicated his life.” Ask the Kremlin for an explanation. ”
🔴 Sanctioned: Heads of the Arctic penal colony where Alexei Navalny was killed. pic.twitter.com/2FZn0W5b73
— Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (@FCDOGovUK) February 21, 2024
It added that those sanctioned include Vadim Konstantinovich Kalinin, who oversaw the prison where Mr Navalny was kept in solitary confinement for up to two weeks at a time.
penal colony Approximately 1,900km (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow It is considered one of the toughest in Russia. The prisoner has been convicted of a serious crime.
Russian authorities say the cause of Navalny's death, the 47-year-old who died suddenly on February 16 in a colony nicknamed the “Arctic Wolf,” remains unknown, and are refusing to release his body for the next two weeks pending a preliminary investigation. announced that it was doing so.
On Wednesday, Mr Navalny's mother Lyudmila Navalnaya filed a lawsuit in a court in the town of Salekhard, near the penal colony, protesting authorities' refusal to release her son's body so that she could bury her son with dignity.
A closed hearing is scheduled for March 4, Russia's state-run TASS news agency reported.
Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya released a video on Monday claiming authorities had not yet handed over his body because they were waiting for traces of the nerve agent Novichok to disappear.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied the allegations of a cover-up and President Vladimir Putin's involvement, calling them “baseless and irreverent accusations about the Russian head of state.”
Britain's decision to take targeted punitive action against prison wardens comes as the United States imposes sanctions on Russia over the death of a critic of President Vladimir Putin and the two-year war in Ukraine, expected to be announced on Friday. It matched the plan.
Prime Minister Cameron is scheduled to attend the G20 foreign ministers' meeting in Brazil later on Wednesday, and the Foreign Office said: “He will use this opportunity to raise the issue of Russian aggression and its global impact with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. I plan to appeal directly.”