Bangladesh, Feb. 28 -- Much is being talked about the February 16 death of convicted Russian activist Alexei Navalny, who was serving time in prison for extremism charges. Navalny was once described by Western media as a populist and a racist (even compared to Donald Trump), but now is being lauded post-mortem as a hero and a martyr, and his death is being attributed to the Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. Let us see what the evidence is.

A typical news report quotes Sergei Biziukin, a “fugitive” opposition activist in Russia as saying (without specifying who is “they”): “They killed him. Even if not on that very day, several years of torture is also a way of killing.” At the same time, Navaln...