A Kaliningrad lawyer recounted the first hours after her arrest.

64-year-old Maria Bontsler said Olga, to his defender To Ilya Sidorov details of his arrest. 

According to her lawyer, after the search, they handcuffed her, placed her in a minivan, twisted her arms, and pressed her thumb forcefully against the screen of her mobile phone. After the device was unlocked with her fingerprint, the officers immediately began "manipulating" it. During interrogation, the device was registered as "voluntarily surrendered" (it was said to contain correspondence between Bontsler and an unnamed Ukrainian citizen).

Furthermore, Bontsler claims that an FSB operative, against whom she had previously complained about the possible torture of her clients, twisted her arm. Her lawyer has already demanded that a criminal case be opened for abuse of office.

Maria Bontsler was arrested In May, she was arrested on suspicion of treason. Investigators claim she allegedly passed on information about Kaliningrad security officials to Western intelligence agencies, information "that she became aware of through her work as a lawyer."

Bontsler was one of the few lawyers in Kaliningrad who wasn't afraid to work on so-called "political" cases. She was the one who defended the pensioner. Igor Baryshnikov, convicted of “fakes” about the Russian army (despite his cancer, he got seven and a half years in prison).

The court remanded her in pretrial detention until the end of July. While there, she contracted bronchitis. According to Bontsler, she is not receiving medical care.