An animal rights activist from the Moscow region is facing criminal charges of treason, the independent news website Mediazona reported this week, citing the woman’s family.
Federal Security Service (FSB) agents raided the home of Yevgenia Konforkina and her parents in the Moscow region town of Lyubertsy last week Thursday.
“They broke into our house like a gang of 15 people,” her 70-year-old mother Tatiana Konforkina was quoted as saying.
“They almost knocked me against the wall. I’ve never seen such horror in my life,” she said, adding that FSB agents mocked her family’s modest lifestyle and asked leading questions about their views on the war in Ukraine.
Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court ruled to place Konforkina in pre-trial detention on Oct. 25.
Konforkina’s family said they do not know what exactly she is accused of and the court’s press service declined to respond to Mediazona’s request for comment. Konforkina’s mother said she was interrogated by FSB agents as a witness in an investigation of her daughter.
Konforkina, 41, faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty of state treason. Her mother said an investigator called and told her that her daughter denied her guilt.
Mediazona said it spoke with Konforkina’s ex-employer at the Lyubertsy horse stable, where she had worked until its closure earlier this year. The former employer described her as an avid animal lover who had sought to help rescue horses from Russian airstrikes in Ukraine.
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