‘I lay down on the concrete floor and lost consciousness’: Maria Bontsler’s health continues to deteriorate, partly due to torturous conditions during transport to and from court
The health of Maria Bontsler, who has been arrested on a charge of state treason (Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code), continues to deteriorate. One of the main reasons for the decline is the torturous conditions in which she is transported to and from court: being driven in a stuffy prison van and held in convoy holding rooms.
On 15 September, Maria Bontsler suffered a hypertensive episode during a court hearing, the For Human Rights Telegram channel reported, citing lawyer Ilya Sidorov, who visited Maria Bontsler in the remand prison on 16 September. SOTAvision specified that her blood pressure had risen to 180/100. An ambulance was called to the court and paramedics treated her. Judge Aleksandr Marochkin asked the doctors whether she might be feigning the episode; they confirmed that the deterioration was genuine.
That same day, the court gave court-appointed lawyer Anastasia Rikhter three hours to review the full case materials, despite Maria Bontsler’s refusal of her services. Throughout this time, Maria had to remain in the convoy holding room. All the lawyers with whom she had previously signed agreements had already been removed from the case on the grounds that they lacked clearance to handle state secrets: Ilya Sidorov and Aleksandr Chauzov over the summer, and Roman Morozov on 2 September. In August, Maria Bontsler’s lawyers published a statement explaining that while they were not refusing to sign the non-disclosure undertaking on state secrets, they considered the classification of the case materials to be unlawful in itself.
Maria Bontsler also said that on the morning of 15 September she felt a stinging pain in her lower abdomen and noticed blood when she urinated. She suspected a flare-up of cystitis and pyelonephritis. She named the first possible cause as the damp and cold in her remand prison cell, and the second as the conditions of her transport. Owing to a knee injury, Maria Bontsler is unable to use the squat toilet at the Kaliningrad Regional Court. ‘I have to hold on and endure the pain the whole time I’m in court,’ she explained during a formal interview with her defence lawyer.
Remand prison staff have said they will only accept warm clothing for her from 15 October.
On 17 September, Judge Marochkin ruled to remove Maria Bontsler from the proceedings until the end of closing arguments. Lawyer Aleksandr Chauzov learned of this when he visited her in the remand prison on 18 September. According to journalist Natalya Kholmanova, Maria Bontsler herself had been pushing for her removal from the proceedings in order to avoid the torturous transport to and from the remand prison: ‘According to Bontsler, Judge Marochkin refused to grant her request, stating that she was not disrupting the order of the hearing. She then started singing prayers and banging on the bars.’ The removal was ordered, but Aleksandr Chauzov says she will continue to be brought to court on hearing days regardless.
After being transported on 17 September, Maria Bontsler became unwell: ‘The doors were shut, and there wasn’t enough air. I started to suffocate, and I had an attack of atrial fibrillation that lasted at least ten minutes. I was terrified my heart would stop and I would die.’ She was transported in an overcrowded prison van with no ventilation, in a 60-by-60-centimetre single-occupancy cubicle known as a ‘stakan’. It is impossible to stand upright in such a space; occupants can only sit with their knees drawn up. There is no seatbelt, and prisoners can be injured on uneven roads. As far back as 2019, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that transport in a ‘stakan’ constitutes torture.
Maria Bontsler told Aleksandr Chauzov that on arrival at the remand prison, in the search room, she ‘lay down on the concrete floor and lost consciousness’. In the cell, her legs began to give way and she lost the ability to speak; by morning she still felt nauseous and weak. She believes these were symptoms of cerebral hypoxia and the after-effects of the atrial fibrillation episode. According to Maria, she received no medical examination on either 17 or 18 September.
UPDATE, 25 September: Maria Bontsler was not transported to the next court hearing, the For Human Rights Telegram channel reports, citing lawyer Ilya Sidorov.
