As Aleksandr Litreev staggered from the beating he had not too long ago gotten, he may barely settle for what he was being informed: Russian officers had pulled a sack of MDMA from his motorized vehicle and he was being accused of possession.
Litreev had flown again to his nation the day earlier than, in entrance of a gathering. On the best way from the airport to his lodge, his car had been surrounded by greater than ten automobiles full of armed navy police.
Although Litreev submitted to a physique search, the surroundings quickly deteriorated when he refused to open his cellphone for the officers. They then tossed him to the bottom and delivered a beating that drove him to the sting of consciousness. It was shortly after he had been taken to the native police headquarters that the pack of medication appeared.
Through the month during which he was detained in mid-2020, just a few extra fees had been leveled in opposition to Litreev involving supposed extremism, hate speech, and possession of overseas information. Just like the preliminary cost, Litreev says these allegations had been all fabricated.
Nevertheless, on condition that solely 0.25% of people that confronted Russian courts the earlier 12 months had been acquitted, he knew his state of affairs was dire. Whereas detained at house awaiting trial, he was in a position to set up a line of communication with the Estonian consulate, whose workers helped him escape throughout the Narva-Ivangorod border. Litreev declined to offer us particular particulars, in all probability out of worry of endangering the individuals who helped him escape.
The rationale why Litreev was an goal of the Russian specialists lies in occasions that occurred numerous years earlier.