Maria Ponomarenko, an imprisoned independent journalist currently on trial on fresh charges of assaulting prison staff, used her closing statement on Monday to tell the court about her recent suicide attempt in prison, which she said came as a result of beatings and torture at the hands of prison staff, her former employer RusNews reported.
In her speech, Ponomarenko, who suffers from claustrophobia and a dissociative disorder, recounted how she had been sent to a punishment cell 13 times in the past year, having been sentenced to six years in prison for “spreading false information” about the Russian military in a Telegram post she wrote about the Russian siege of Mariupol.
Ponomarenko said that her torture and harassment by prison staff had “reached its peak” over the last few months, ultimately prompting her to attempt suicide by slitting her wrists. In one incident she recounted, she had a panic attack after spending two hours in the shower while waiting for the water to heat up, after which she was beaten and forcibly removed from the shower by prison guards, who then sent her to a punishment cell for 15 days.
“I’ve never seen so much violence anywhere as I have seen in the penitentiary system,” Ponomarenko said, recalling being beaten and harassed by psychiatric nurses from the Biysk Psychiatric Hospital who were called to the prison, kicking her, throwing her against the walls, punching her in the stomach and forcing her into an ambulance where she said she lost consciousness.
Ponomarenko is due back in court on Thursday to hear the judge deliver a verdict after fresh assault charges were brought against her for allegedly assaulting prison staff, something that Ponomarenko has categorically denied.
Her lawyer Dmitry Shitov told human rights group OVD-Info last week that Ponomarenko had attempted suicide in prison as a result of the “constant bullying” she was subjected to by prison staff, while RusNews shared alarming letters from Ponomarenko in which she asked for help but said that she was unable to write about what she was going through for fear that her letters would not be passed by prison censors.
“Life is beautiful, no matter what,” Ponomarenko said at the end of her speech. “I love life, even though I’m on the brink sometimes. Either way, everything is going to be fine.”