The father of Maria Butina, the woman accused of being a covert Russian agent, has reportedly appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to intervene in his daughter’s case, claiming she’s being tortured in a Virginia jail.
“Being unable to prove her guilt in a fair trial, the American authorities set the objective to break her and force her to confess to the crimes she has never committed,” Valery Butin wrote to Putin, Sputnik News , a news outlet owned by the Russian government, reported Wednesday. “She is subjected to sophisticated torture: for two weeks in prison she was not allowed to sleep, being woken every 15 minutes; she was also kept in a cold facility and denied medical care; subjected to humiliating strip searches, as well as to repeated and lengthy periods of administrative segregation, which, in total, have amounted to nearly three months.”
Butin said he was not sure how much longer his 30-year-old daughter could “withstand” her alleged ill-treatment.
He is asking Putin to become personally involved and to provide assistance to Butina’s lawyers.
Butin’s appeal, which is to have Putin to become personally involved and to provide assistance to Butina’s lawyers, comes after a federal district court judge in Washington on Wednesday denied Butina’s request to be taken out of “administrative segregation,” or solitary confinement. She is being held at William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria, Va., as she awaits a hearing date.
Her attorneys, Robert Driscoll and Alfred Carry, argued Tuesday that their client had spent a total of 67 consecutive days in solitary confinement since she was arrested in July, spending at least 22 hours a day in isolation.
Butina was arrested and charged by federal prosecutors over the summer for conspiracy and for failing to register as a foreign agent after allegedly infiltrating conservative political groups including the NRA “in an effort to advance the interests of the Russian Federation.”
According to the indictment, she entered the U.S. in August 2016 on a student visa and was enrolled in American University in Washington where she continued to act “under the direction and control” of a Russian official, assumed to be Aleksandr Torshin, a former Russian lawmaker and close friend of Putin.
Prosecutors and Butina’s lawyers are negotiating a “potential resolution” to her criminal case, according to court documents filed earlier in November, which could mean they are discussing a possible plea deal.
Russia has condemned the charges against Butina, which could result in at most a 15-year sentence, as “clearly groundless.”