Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, on Saturday demanded that Russian authorities release his body for burial and accused a "demonic" Russian President Vladimir Putin of "torturing" his corpse.
In a six minute video posted on YouTube, Navalnaya accused Putin of holding her husband's body "hostage," and questioned Putin's often-professed Christian faith.
Navalny's mother Lyudmila said on Friday that Russian investigators were refusing to release his body from a morgue in the remote Arctic city of Salekhard until she agreed to lay him to rest without a public funeral.
She said an official had told her that she should agree to their demands, as Navalny's body was already decomposing.
On Saturday, Navalny aides said that authorities had threatened to bury him in the remote prison colony where he died unless his family agreed to their conditions.