Dmitry Kolker was hospitalized in intensive care: arrested in hospital, he died after two days in prison
No one probably had more illusions that in Russia anyone could be arrested for no reason and sentenced without evidence, and that physical and psychological torture was practiced in the regime’s prisons. But what happened to physicist Dmitry Kolker marks a new, unthinkable precedent of ruthlessness. The 54-year-old physics luminary was arrested in the intensive care unit of a Novosibirsk clinic, where he was rushed to hospital for worsening pancreatic cancer. He was in pain, could no longer eat, fed through a tube, had just had three surgeries and was now considered too weak to withstand chemotherapy. In other words, he was dying. Despite this, at dawn on 30 June he was arrested by a team of FSB agents, the political police, loaded on a plane and transferred to the Lefortovo prison in Moscow, the prison of the services. Two days later he was hospitalized and died at 2.40 am on Sunday. His family was informed of his death on Sunday morning, with an unsigned telegram.
A story so absurd that even the son of the scientist Maksim at first refused to believe it, and when he received a phone call at the dawn of June 30 from the investigator informing him of his father’s arrest in intensive care, he hung up, believing a bad joke. Only on the third phone call, with his father confirming his arrest, and asking him to open the door of his apartment for a search, did he realize it was true. “The FSB killed my father, and did not even allow him to say goodbye to his family!” He wrote on the Russian social media VKontakte.
Russian law prohibits the detention of defendants in such severe health conditions, and the family had hired a lawyer to try to free Kolker. But a Novosibirsk judge had validated the arrest without waiting for the arrival of the defense lawyer, who then could not find any trace of the scientist in the Moscow prisons: he seemed to have disappeared, and the file on his case seemed not to exist. Meanwhile, an FSB agent had reassured the scientist’s wife, telling her that the conditions of detention in Lefortovo were excellent, and “there is even a refrigerator in the cell.” The fact that Kolker was no longer able to eat seemed to have been ignored by his captors.
Even more surreal, if possible, was the reason why Kolker was arrested: the FSB suspected him of spying for China. Doctor of physics and mathematics, the scientist headed the laboratory of quantum optical technologies in the Institute of Laser Physics of the famous Academic Citadel of Novosibirsk, as well as teaching at the university and polytechnic of the Siberian city famous as the intellectual capital of Siberia. In 2018, he had given lectures in China, but his daughter Alina says that the very strict rules of the institution where he worked made it totally impossible to pass unauthorized information: the texts of the lectures were approved before, and to verify that the scientist did not deviate from them. speaking in English had been forbidden. Classes were taught in Russian, and an FSB officer accompanied Kolker everywhere to make sure he didn’t say one more word. He had already been questioned several times, and had always denied any responsibility.
But two days earlier another scientist from Novosibirsk, also accused of spying for Beijing, had been arrested: Anatoly Maslov, 75, was one of the principal researchers of the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, specializing in hypersonic technologies. He, too, had been stopped by a team of agents from Moscow and, after the quick validation of the arrest by a judge, was loaded onto a special plane to be transferred to Lefortovo. It is evident that someone in the services would like to unveil a “plot” by accusing scientists of great fame and reputation, well known in academic circles (Kolker was also a musician who often performed in organ music concerts).
In a street in Novosibirsk, a spontaneous memorial was born with the portraits of Maslov and Kolker, with dozens of people who have deposited flowers and left protest writings, while colleagues are collecting money for the defense of the first and the funeral of the second.
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