U.S.
authorities have actually charged Russian researcher and Harvard Medical School researcher Ksenia Petrova with smuggling biological products and say they plan to deport her to Russia, where her legal team alerts she could face persecution for her anti-war views.Petrova, 31, was officially charged on Wednesday on suspicion of attempting to smuggle frog embryos and embryonic samples into the U.S.
She faces up to 20 years in jail if founded guilty, according to the U.S.
Attorneys Office in Boston.The charges stem from a Feb.
16 event when Petrova was stopped by customs officials at Boston Logan International Airport upon returning from Paris.
Her U.S.
research visa was revoked the exact same day, and she was later placed in immigration detention.Petrovas attorney, Gregory Romanovsky, called the charges outrageous and lawfully indefensible.The government verified in court the other day its intent to deport Ksenia to Russia, where it knows she will deal with serious risk for opposing the Putin program, he stated in a statement sent to The Moscow Times.Romanovsky argued that Petrova did not need an authorization to generate the non-living frog embryos, which are reportedly ruled out restricted biological materials under U.S.
Customs law.
Yesterdays hearing in federal district court in Vermont verified that Customs and Border Patrol officials had no legal basis for cancelling Ksenias visa and apprehending her, he said.Petrova was initially held in Vermont but was moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Louisiana.
On May 14, a federal judge in Vermont arranged a bail hearing in her wrongful detention case for May 28.
Petrova went to that hearing remotely.Less than 2 hours after the Vermont judge set a hearing on Ksenias release, she was unexpectedly moved from ICE to criminal custody, Romanovsky said.This is not a coincidence.
It is an effort by the federal government to validate its outrageous and lawfully indefensible position that this scientist working for the U.S.
on remedies for cancer and aging research has somehow end up being a risk to the community, the lawyer added.