Crimean activist held for over a week in FSB basement in Simferopol, her attorney says 

Activist of the union of medical workers, nurse and civic journalist Irina Danilovich, who is currently under arrest for allegedly possessing explosives, had spent over a week in the basement of the Simferopol FSB office, Graty media outlet reported, citing her attorney Ayder Azamatov.

According to him, FSB officers tortured Danilovich to make her sign a confession. The activist told her attorney that there was no toilet in her cell. She was allowed to leave the cell twice a day, accompanied by the officers. She was fed only once a day. Graty reports that FSB employees put a bag over her head, asked her to choose between the forest or jail, and threatened to take her to Mariupol, where she “would get lost.”

According to the attorney, the activist was interrogated for three days in a row using a polygraph. Danilovich was asked about connections to foreign special services, media outlets and organisations, and about her involvement in the Crimean Solidarity human rights group. She passed the polygraph test.

A week later, the officers began to force her to sign documents without reading them and to sign two blank pieces of paper, after which they promised they would let her go, Azamatov said. Besides, they asked Danilovich to say that she was not being coerced on video. However, after the activist agreed to do this on 7 May, she was detained on suspicion of possessing explosives and brought to a court in Simferopol, which sent her to a pre-trial detention facility for two months.

The explosives (200 grams of TNT) were found in a spectacle case in Danilovich’s handbag. There were also medical needles and a tourniquet in her handbag, as she works as a nurse. The prosecution claims, however, that the activist planned to use the needles as submunitions.

When the activist was brought in, no explosives were found on her, which is shown on video. Her defence team maintains that FSB officers had planted the explosives in her bag, and that the case was falsified.

The nurse was supposedly detained on 29 April, when she was returning home to the village of Vladyslavivka from Koktebel, where she works. For two weeks, there was no information on her whereabouts. On 11 May, Azamatov informed that Danilovich was held at a pre-trial detention facility in Simferopol.

Danilovich was born in Vitebsk, Belarus. She lived in Russia’s Belgorod, and then moved to Crimea shortly before it was incorporated into Russia, where she got a Ukrainian passport. Danilovich works as a nurse in Crimea. She is a member of the union of medical workers. Lately, she has been covering the problems of the local healthcare system as a civic journalist.