The Russian scientist accused of sharing state secrets with China died on Saturday, two days after being arrested. Dmitri Kolker, 54, was arrested and transferred to Moscow while he was in a hospital bed in a city 3,360 kilometers from the Russian capital, being treated for advanced pancreatic cancer.
The death was confirmed by Kolker’s family members. “The FSB [serviço secreto russo] killed my father,” Maxim, the scientist’s son, wrote on VKontakte, a Russian social network similar to Facebook. The post included a telegram that reported the scientist’s death in a Moscow hospital at 2:40 am.
“The fourth stage of pancreatic cancer is a sentence. But [ele ia] serve that sentence not at home, but within the walls of a pre-trial detention center, without proper medical care. It’s the worst thing that can happen to a person,” wrote the scientist’s daughter, Alina Mironova, according to local media.
Dmitri Kolker had a doctorate in physics and mathematics from the University of Novosibirsk – the city where he was approached by the police. He is accused of collaborating with China’s security services.
Moscow and Beijing have intensified their ties in the wake of Western sanctions on Russia, and in February — before the Ukraine war — Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping called the two countries’ alliance “unbounded friendship.”
Kolker’s arrest, according to his family, was related to lectures to students at an international conference in China. According to Maxim, the exhibits were certified by the FSB, Russia’s secret service. “FSB officials banned him from speaking in English,” he told a local news website.
Kolker was head of the quantum optical technologies laboratory and author of 112 scientific articles and three patents — he also worked in partnership with institutes in Germany and France. There are no details of what information would have been shared with the Chinese.
His cousin Anton Dianov called the accusation absurd. “He was a scientist, he loved his country and he was working in Russia, despite many invitations from leading universities and laboratories to work abroad,” he told Reuters news agency.
A day after the arrest, the Novosibirsk court of law ordered the scientist to be detained until the end of August, pending trial. If he was convicted, the physicist could face up to 20 years in prison.
Kolker’s lawyer, Alexander Fedulov, told Reuters he had tried to contact Russian authorities on behalf of the client but was removed from the FSB’s investigative department. He also said he will file a legal complaint on Monday about the circumstances of the physicist’s detention.
Kolker’s arrest was the second by Novosibirsk scientists in a week. On Tuesday, Russian officials also arrested Anatoli Maslov, the chief scientist at a mechanical institute. He is accused of leaking hypersonic technology data. In this case, however, there are no details of who would have received the information. It is uncertain whether the leak was linked to military equipment.
Several Russian scientists have been arrested and charged with treason in recent years for allegedly passing sensitive material to foreigners. Kremlin critics, on the other hand, say arrests are often the result of allegations without evidence.
