Britain’s Telegraph today leads the way in stoking the fire of the “Navalny murder” case with their breathtaking headline feature, “Navalny’s Body Found Bruised in Arctic Morgue.” It opens: “The bruised body of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, has been found in a hospital morgue in the Arctic, two days after he died in a nearby prison.”
To clarify, first, Navalny’s body was not lost. It is the subject of a medical inquiry into the cause of death two days ago, and it is an “Arctic morgue” because he was incarcerated at a prison inside the Arctic circle. However, it gets worse.
(Telegraph} is actually re-branding a Novaya Gazeta article, which reported that an unnamed paramedic said that, when the body was brought into the Salekhard District Clinical Hospital, it had bruises on the chest and head. He explained: “Such injuries, described by those that saw them, appear from seizures. The person convulses, they try to restrain him, and bruises appear. They also said that he also had a bruise on his chest. That is, they still tried to resuscitate him, and he died, most likely, from cardiac arrest.” So, this unofficial account, for what it is worth, is consistent with what the Russian prison authorities stated, that Navalny’s had fallen unconscious and that they worked on him for quite a while, attempting to revive him.
Then (Telegraph} adds: “Navalny’s mother failed to find his body at the morgue in Salekhard on Saturday and his colleagues at the Anti-Corruption Foundation accused the Russian authorities of a cover-up.” Both statements are true, but it is also the case that when she arrived at the morgue last night, it was already past hours. She had no problem finding his body today where it was expected to be.
Clearly, (Telegraph} is on the case, and it doesn’t appear that any items taken out of context, accurate or not, will be giving them any pause for breath.
