Mourners gathered in Moscow for the funeral of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny amid tight security and fears of a police crackdown.

Riot police have assembled near the Church of the Holy Mother of Gods and Borisovskoye Cemetery, where a funeral and burial are scheduled to take place on Friday.Metal detectors and surveillance cameras installed before funeral moscow times the report said.

The church was surrounded by a metal fence and dozens of police cars were parked nearby. The Kremlin has warned police that they will break up any event they deem to resemble a political demonstration under protest laws.

Human rights groups advised attendees to bring their passports and a bottle of water and write down details of lawyers who could help them if they were detained, Reuters reported.

On the eve of his funeral, Navalny’s team accused authorities of blocking their plans for a larger memorial service and that they had faced difficulties hiring a hearse to transport his body to the church.

“Some unidentified people called the morgue and threatened them if they accepted the collection of Alexei’s body,” Navalny’s spokesman Kira Yarmysh said, adding that the funeral could Hence the delay.

She shared a video on X, formerly known as Twitter, showing dozens of people standing behind a metal fence outside the church in Moscow’s Marino district ahead of a religious service scheduled for 2 p.m. local time.

Navalny is later scheduled to be buried in Borisovskoye Cemetery, about 1.5 miles across the Moskva River.

Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, who has two children with him, has previously said she was unsure whether the funeral itself would be peaceful or whether police would arrest anyone attending. By. She is not expected to attend as she is out of the country.

Hundreds of people were arrested in cities across Russia as they laid flowers in Navalny’s memory, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political repression in Russia.

Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, is expected to attend his funeral. It was unclear who else would be allowed into the church for the service.

Navalny, widely described as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest political enemy, died suddenly on February 16 at the age of 47 in an Arctic penal colony. His death certificate reportedly showed he died of natural causes.

He has spent more than 30 years in prison on a series of fraud and extremism criminal charges that Navalny said were politically motivated.

Putin has yet to comment on Navalny’s death and has avoided mentioning his name for years.

This story is being updated