Alexei Navalny’s mum FINALLY shown son’s body – but Russia says he died of natural causes & Putin wants ‘secret burial’

ALEXEI Navalny's mum has finally been allowed to see her son's body - but Russia has insisted he died of "natural causes".

Vladimir Putin's staunchest critic is believed to have been murdered at the Polar Wolf penal colony after he was jailed on trumped-up charges.

2

2

Navalny's mum Lyudmila had originally been blocked from seeing her son's remains - with reports he was left battered and bruised.

She accused Russian investigators of planning a "secret" funeral for her son and said she would not agree to it.

The grieving mum claimed Russian officials are trying to blackmail her, threatening to "do something" to the corpse.

"They want this to be done secretly, with no farewell. They want to bring me to the edge of a cemetery, to a fresh grave and say: here lies your son. I don't agree to this," she said in a YouTube video.

His team and family have alleged that the Kremlin murdered him, an allegation the Kremlin has angrily rejected.

His mother said she had been shown his body and death certificate.

Navalny's team said the death certificate stated that the opposition politician had died of natural causes.

But on Tuesday, it was claimed that Navalny, 47, had been killed with one punch to the heart after being forced to spend hours in freezing temperatures.

The brutal was once a "hallmark of the KGB", according to the founder of human rights group Gulagu.net.

Navalny died in prison on Friday while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges at the IK-3 Arctic prison colony.

Russia claimed the lawyer died of "sudden death syndrome". And now, Navalny's team said his death certificate stated the Putin critic had died of natural causes.

Earlier, it was alleged that his body had been found covered in bruises, as his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh asserted he was "murdered".

Russian-born human rights activist Vladimir Osechkin told The Times that the bruising found on Navalny's body was consistent with the "one-punch" technique previously taught to KGB special forces operatives.

Osechkin further claimed that the Russian lawyer was forced to spend more than two and a half hours outdoors in an open-air solitary confinement space where temperatures were as low as -27C.

Prisoners were normally kept outside for no more than an hour - much less in such extreme conditions.

The Russian dissident's information was said to have come from a source working in corrective colony FKU IK-3 - also known as the Polar Wolf jail - where Navalny died.

He said: "I think that they first destroyed his body by keeping him out in the cold for a long time and slowing the blood circulation down to a minimum.