Court dismissed the lawsuit which he had filed his mother late leader of the Russian opposition Alexei Navalny against the Arctic Circle prison colony where he died, because he claimed Navalny himself was not the plaintiff, a close associate of Navalny said today.

Ivan Zhdanov, a former adviser to Navalny, said the court in the small town of Labitnangi, near the prison colony, dismissed the suit on the grounds that Navalny himself should be the plaintiff.

“Alexei had filed many lawsuits for not providing medical care in the prison colonies. They were rejecting them,” wrote Zhdanov in a post on Telegram. “Now that they’ve killed him, they’re dismissing his family’s lawsuit with insulting language.”

Alexei Navalny’s widow, Yulia, referring to the court’s decision, said today that the court rejected the lawsuit against the prisons where her husband died because they would have to present videos and other information about the circumstances of his death.

Yulia Navalnaya, on social networking site X, said she believes the case is closed because prison authorities should present detailed information about what happened on February 16, the day her late husband was pronounced dead.

Navalny’s family and supporters they blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin that he had him killed, a charge the Kremlin angrily rejected. Navalny had survived a poisoning with a Soviet-era nerve agent in Russia in 2020 and years of harsh treatment in prison, including long periods of solitary confinement.

Russian prison authorities said Navalny, 47, had lost consciousness and died on February 16 after a walk outside the Polar Wolf prison, where he was serving a three-decade sentence.

Navalny’s team later said his death certificate said he died of natural causes.

Navalny’s mother Ludmila Navalnaya had gone to the Arctic town of Aalekhardt, 2,000 kilometers from Moscow, shortly after his death was announced, where she said investigators were refusing to hand over the body to her from the local morgue until she agreed to bury him without a public funeral

Authorities then delivered Navalny’s body, whose funeral took place in Moscow, where thousands of his supporters attended the brief funeral procession, then laid flowers at his grave, ignoring Kremlin warnings against large gatherings.