The young man died in September. The body of the Zambian student recruited from a Russian prison by the Wagner paramilitary group before he died in fighting in Ukraine was repatriated from Russia to Lusaka on Sunday.
On the tarmac of the Zambian capital’s airport, a white hearse with curtained windows revealed a coffin made of roughly nailed boards and stamped with a code drawn in black marker and letters of the Cyrillic alphabet.
forensic examination
Lemekhani Nyirenda, 23, who was serving a prison sentence near Moscow, was murdered in Ukraine in September. The student at the Moscow Institute of Engineering Physics was sentenced to nine years in prison in April 2020 for a drug case.
The Zambian government last month demanded an urgent explanation from Russia about the circumstances of his death.
Two weeks later, Wagner’s group admitted to recruiting the young man in prison, claiming that he had voluntarily joined the group before dying “a hero’s death” in Ukraine.
Russian law allows a prisoner to be pardoned in the context of “special military operations,” Zambian Foreign Minister Stanley Kakubo explained at the beginning of the month, who regretted the death of Lemekhani Nyirenda in those conditions.
Holding hands, shoulders, often in tears, his relatives, including his parents and brother, welcomed his remains on Sunday. A choir accompanied them. Together they sang religious songs.
The family refused to speak to the press. A family spokesman said the body will be taken to a morgue for forensic examination and a burial date will be announced at a later date.
Source: BFM TV
