Ms. Iryna Horobtsova, a Ukrainian activist from Kherson, sentenced by Russia to 10 years in custody on charges of “espionage”, reports the lack of medical care in the Simferopol Pre-Trial Detention Centre. Her health condition is worsening but she has no access to necessary medicines.
This has become known from the letter received by Ms. Olena Kornii, Horobtsova’s sister, from the Simferopol Pre-Trial Detention Centre no 1, as GRATY reports.
In the letter, Iryna says that she suffers from a severe headache and is unable to get the necessary medication or medical support, even in parcels.
“All these 2.5 years I have going mad by headaches. While I was isolated without the possibility of correspondence, both the attitude and the medical care were corresponding. I was asking and asking for headache pills, without any response. It was terrible, because most often I have migraines due to lack of sleep and nerves. And this is exactly what happened to me regularly,” Ms. Horobtsova wrote.
Iryna’s sister recalled that even before her detention, the activist had been diagnosed with a brain aneurysm, which required regular monitoring. Despite this, Russian medical staff refuses to provide the necessary medicines, referring to a required prescription that can’t be received in the pre-trial detention center conditions.
“They don’t have the pills to give me at my request. I can’t get all these medicines in the parcel, because I don’t have a prescription. And very often, the medical service refuses to receive medicines for me because of my accusation article. It’s an endless circle,” Iryna writes.
In one of the episodes described in the letter, she tells how her heart suddenly failed. She tried to call a paramedic, but she was never treated.
“My cellmates, I am thankful to them, were giving me Corvalol in tabs, and I was lying, doubled up with pain, and did not understand what was happening”, she wrote.
Iryna Horobtsova is a tester in an IT company and a public activist. During the Russian occupation of Kherson, she, among other things, helped the local hospital: she brought medical staff from remote areas, searched for and brought food, medicines and medical dressing, as well as delivered medicines to seriously ill people in remote settlements of the Kherson Region. She also attended peaceful assemblies against the Russian occupation in Kherson and posted photos of these assemblies on social networks.
On May 13, 2022, on the activist’s birthday, a group of unknown men wearing Russian military uniform drove up to the multi-apartment building in Kherson where Iryna Horobtsova lived with her parents, searched their apartment and took Iryna with them, telling her parents that she had been taken for questioning. During the search, they seized the activist’s laptop and mobile phone. Since that time, there had been no communication with Iryna, and the parents decided to contact the Russian occupation administration in Kherson. There they were informed that the daughter had been moved to Crimea.
Lawyer Emil Kurbedinov, who was hired by Iryna’s family, upon learning that she was in Crimea, repeatedly submitted requests to the Russian Penitentiary Service, the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Ministry of Defense and asked for the meeting with his client. The bodies replied that Iryna Horobtsova was not involved in the criminal case, but that she had been detained due to “counteraction to the special military operation’ and the decision regarding her would be taken when the “operation” finished. Later, explaining the lawyer why the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs would not investigate the disappearance of Iryna Horobtsova, in one of the answers it was noted that on May 25, 2022, she had undergone a fingerprinting procedure at the Simferopol Pre-Trial Detention Center No 2.
In March 2024, the lawyer learned that the activist was accused of espionage (Article 276 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). For the first time, Kurbedinov was able to see his client only in court, when a decision on pre-trial restriction was officially taken. The case is classified. Iryna Horobtsova is represented in it by a Russian state attorney by appointment, but Emil Kurbedinov remains her lawyer regarding the conditions of detention.
On August 15 the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office informed that Iryna Horobtsova had been sentenced to 10 years and six months in the general security regime penal colony on charges of espionage (RF CC Article 276). The activist has appealed against the sentence and is waiting for appeal procedure in the Simferopol Pre-Trial Detention Center.
As informed by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, the investigation states that from February 2022 to March 2023 the activist transferred the data on movements of the Russian military equipment and personnel of the Russian Armed Forces and Russian Guard across Kherson Region as well as their deployment locations to an officer of the Main Intelligence Service of Ukraine. But this is physically impossible because she had been already detained in May 2022.
