Undue process

After three months in pretrial detention, 64-year-old Bontsler has not only seen her health sharply deteriorating, but she’s also being denied proper medical treatment despite the fact that her doctor says she is now just “one step away from a stroke”.

Preparing for the worst

Maria Bontsler is a well-known figure in Kaliningrad’s civic life. In the 2000s she founded the local Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, which advocated for those who had been sent to fight in the Chechen wars and their families. In recent years, she has poured her energies into representing political prisoners.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, she has represented those prosecuted for “discrediting” the Russian military or for spreading “false information” about it — charges that have been routinely used in Russia to silence war critics. One of her most high-profile clients, the gravely ill Kaliningrad activist Igor Baryshnikov, received a 7.5-year sentence for anti-war posts he made on social media.

In total, Bontsler has defended hundreds of people who found themselves in the state’s crosshairs for making anti-war statements. In 2022, she herself was fined twice for remarks she made while defending her clients in court that were ruled by the judges to have amounted to “discrediting the army”.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Bontsler was given the opportunity to leave the country having been granted a humanitarian visa by Germany, but she chose instead to remain in Kaliningrad, explaining that she did not want to abandon her clients.

“I didn’t think they would come for me given my age and my reputation. But nothing stops them nowadays and so I’m preparing for the worst,” Bontsler says in one of her letters from prison. “Everybody understands that this is a set-up, the work of a single person whom I’ve exposed many times in the past who decided to take revenge.”

Bontsler says that she enjoys the support of the legal community, many of whom have described the case against her as an attack on all lawyers, in an attempt to stop them defending political prisoners. “There are no state secrets in my case — they close the hearings just to keep their abuses hidden.”

From detention, Bontsler has written about her “collapsing” health: “I’m in a pre-stroke condition — my cardiologist explained that if I don’t take the proper medication, a stroke is inevitable. I take what they give me, but I suffer constant side effects: nausea, dizziness, headaches, stomach pain. At home I could adjust my treatment; here, I have no choice.”

The FSB report

Just days before Bontsler’s detention by police in late May, she had been in hospital undergoing treatment for a severe bout of hypertension. Her home was searched, and she was placed in a pretrial detention centre the following day. 

According to investigators, Bontsler exchanged Telegram messages in August and September with an officer working for the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) known as Dyachuk, passing him information about Russian security officials that she had gained access to through her legal work. She was subsequently charged for engaging in “confidential cooperation with a foreign state,” though has never been told for which country she’s accused of spying. 

Her lawyer Ilya Sidorov insists that there is no evidence against his client and that the case is based entirely on a single report written by FSB officer Kirill Takhtov, who claimed Bontsler had corresponded with Dyachuk.

“There’s nothing in the report that would actually fall under the article she’s charged with. It’s simply the fact that she is suspected of corresponding with someone who claimed to be SBU,” Sidorov said, adding that Takhtov is known for torturing suspects to fabricate evidence — among them one of Bontsler’s clients.

Bontsler herself told the court she believed Takhtov was acting out of personal enmity “I first noticed him years ago when a video circulated showing him beating and torturing journalist Igor Rudnikov while arresting him. I’ve dealt with many torture cases in my career. This same man, Kirill, was involved again and again. I’m convinced he wants me prosecuted to settle a score.”

Bontsler added that during her detention, Takhtov forcibly seized her phone and unlocked it by twisting her arm and unblocking it using her fingerprint.

She also rejected the accusation that she had shared data about her clients with the SBU, noting that the names of her clients and the sentences they had received were all in the public domain. 

A step away from a stroke

The deterioration of Bontsler’s health has been evident during her trial. Appearing by video link from pretrial detention, she has repeatedly collapsed or struggled to remain standing, often having to hold on to fixtures for support.

In July, staff at the pretrial detention centre where she is being held left her standing in the rain for over an hour, after which she developed acute bronchitis and had to be hospitalised. Her lawyer says this was done on purpose as punishment for her work. 

As a result, Brotsler had to spend 12 days in hospital, during which she was denied access to her personal belongings, was forbidden to shower or approach the window, and was not provided with vegetarian meals, leaving her with little choice but to starve. During her trial, she also recalled how she would be shackled to her bed every night.

“They kept me in hospital with two armed guards — pistols, batons — and I was handcuffed to the bed. That’s how they held me for two weeks.”

Doctors eventually diagnosed multiple stomach ulcers and arrhythmia. A cardiologist warned that her heart was “full of blood clots” and that she was “a step away from a stroke”, Bontsler said during her court hearing. Despite this, she was discharged prematurely, antibiotics were stopped, and she was sent back to pretrial detention in early August, where she now receives virtually no medical supervision.

“At morning checks, there are no medical staff. Doctors don’t examine me or give prescribed treatment. I live with constant chest and kidney pain. There is nobody to complain to. There is no monitoring of my health,” Bontsler said.