Sochi resident remains deprived of liberty after completion of administrative arrest

Olga Eskova from Sochi, who was arrested for 15 days for a pro-Ukrainian comment on a messenger, was not released after the end of her arrest. The woman remains in a mental hospital, from where she was taken from a special detention center for administrative detainees.

"Caucasian Knot" wrote that 51-year-old Olga Eskova from Sochi was detained on July 10. The court sentenced her to 15 days of arrest for a pro-Ukrainian comment on Telegram, but after five days in a special detention center, she was transferred to a mental hospital. Eskova's relatives were informed that she attempted suicide.

Olga Eskova's administrative arrest expired on July 25, but she was not released from the mental hospital, where she served 10 of the 15 days assigned to her. The head of the clinic could not tell Eskova's husband how long they were going to keep her there, the human rights project OVD-Info reported (listed by the Russian Ministry of Justice as a foreign agent).

According to Olga's husband Eduard, the woman was not involved in politics, although she had a civic position. Olga works as a salesperson in a local store. The couple's sons have been living outside of Russia since 2022; the eldest son was previously detained by police at one of the protests.

According to Eduard, a police officer came to Olga's work and detained her, and the next day she was taken to court. Even on the day of the arrest, the police could not tell the man where his wife was, although they threatened to prosecute her further. “If she behaves badly, we will charge her with a criminal case,” he quotes an employee of one of the police departments.

On the day of the trial, Olga managed to tell her husband that during the day and night spent at the police station, she was not fed or given anything to drink, and “they took her to the toilet at night with scandals.” Eduard was not allowed into the court. “My wife left the court building, thinking that she had been given 10 days (...) After that, she was taken to a temporary detention facility (IVS). A little later, a post appeared on the court's website that a hearing had taken place on the 11th, at which my wife was arrested for 15 days,” the project quotes Eskov as saying.

Later, Eduard was told that his wife needed a medicine that Olga had never been prescribed before: according to the man, his wife had no health problems before her arrest. Eskov bought the said drug and brought it to the detention center, but there he was told that Olga was not there. An employee of the detention center said that Olga was taken away “in an ambulance” without being told where, and her relatives had to find out for themselves which medical facility she was in.

When Eskov handed over his things to his wife, they were only allowed to talk for a few minutes. Olga managed to report that she was under pressure: her safety was threatened by “criminals” to whom the security forces read the contents of her pro-Ukrainian comments. “And these criminals’ relatives died in Ukraine. She was in shock, had a nervous breakdown, and it turned out that way. I don’t know more, but purely logically I understand that criminals and people convicted under administrative articles should not intersect,” Eduard explained. He added that Olga was diagnosed with “schizophrenic disorder with persecution mania” at the mental hospital.

* the activities of the Meta company (which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) are prohibited in Russia.