Russia won't cancel Navalny's 'terrorist' status even though he's dead, widow says

By Mark Trevelyan

LONDON (Reuters) - Russia's financial watchdog has rejected a request to remove late opposition leader Alexei Navalny from its list of "terrorists and extremists" even though he is dead, his widow Yulia Navalnaya said on Friday.

She published a Dec. 16 letter from the watchdog, Rosfinmonitoring, that said Navalny was the subject of a criminal investigation into money laundering and the financing of terrorism. It said the watchdog had not been informed of any move to drop the case, and therefore he was still on the list.

Navalny died suddenly last February in an Arctic penal colony where he was serving sentences totalling more than 30 years on a variety of charges he rejected as attempts to silence his criticism of President Vladimir Putin. He was 47.

Yulia Navalnaya blames Putin for his death and has offered a reward to any witnesses who can come forward with evidence he was murdered. The Kremlin strongly rejects the allegation, and Russian investigators say he died of natural causes.

"Putin is afraid of Alexei even after he killed him," Navalnaya wrote on Telegram. She said the purpose of continuing to label her husband as a terrorist and an extremist, even after his death, was to intimidate Russians.

"Why does Putin need this? Obviously, not to prohibit Alexei from opening bank accounts. This is no longer possible," she said.

"Putin is doing this to scare you. He wants you to be afraid even to mention Alexei and gradually forget his name. But no one will forget."

Rosfinmonitoring is empowered to freeze the bank accounts of those on the "terrorists and extremists" register. Among the thousands of people and groups on the list are Navalnaya herself and three lawyers for her late husband who are due to be sentenced next week on charges of belonging to an extremist group.

Prosecutors say the lawyers used their access to Navalny to enable him to pursue subversive activity even after he was in prison. Their supporters say they are being punished for simply doing their job, and that the prosecution of lawyers crosses a new threshold of repression in Putin's Russia.

The Kremlin says it does not comment on individual court cases, but authorities have cast Navalny and his supporters as Western-backed traitors seeking to destabilise the country.

(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Toby Chopra)