MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th August, 2018) Maria Butina, a Russian held in a US jail on suspicion of being a foreign agent, has been subject to repeated nighttime intrusions and unwarranted strip searches, which amount to psychological pressure, the Russian Embassy said.
Russian diplomats last visited the detained 29-year-old on Thursday. After talking to the woman, they said they would send a diplomatic note to the US State Department, "demanding to stop psychologically pressuring and humiliating our fellow citizen."
The Embassy said in a statement on social media prison authorities had resumed their practice of checking on Butina every 15 minutes at night.
"That is how inmates, who are likely to commit suicide, are treated. Maria never gave causes for such concern. She is still fully determined to prove her innocence. It is obvious that it is an attempt to break her will," the press release on Facebook read.
The litany of irregularities discovered by Embassy staff also includes strip searches that are carried out after every single visit by her attorneys, diplomats or acquaintances, sometimes as often as three times a day.
She has also been denied necessary medical attention after complaining about a worsening case of arthritis. "A swelling on her leg, which resulted from permanently cold temperatures in her cell, keeps getting worse. Maria is only provided with painkillers. Now she has to walk with a limp."
In violation of all norms, the woman has also been barred from receiving letters in Russian under pretext they might contain "coded messages," although the Embassy argued that prison administration seemed unwilling to "burden itself and look for a translator."
The Embassy stressed that such "abnormal" treatment of a suspect was becoming more and more intolerable, spurred by hysteria on US social and mainstream media, which remind of a Salem witch hunt.
The diplomatic mission concluded by saying the Marias determination to prove her innocence had only grown, and a fund-raising website would soon be created to pay for her legal defense.
Maria is a recent American University graduate arrested in Washington, DC on July 15 on charges of acting as an agent for a foreign government. She firmly denies the accusations, which may land her in jail for up to 15 years. Russia has slammed the charges as "clearly groundless."
