A Russian scientist who was arrested in Siberia last week on suspicion of state treason and flown to Moscow despite suffering from advanced pancreatic cancer has died, his lawyer told Reuters on Sunday.
The scientist, Dmitry Kolker, had been taken to Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, lawyer Alexander Fedulov said.
“He died yesterday. Tomorrow we will lodge a complaint over his detention,” he said. Kolker’s family said last week he had been taken from a hospital in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, where he was being fed through a tube, and bundled on a flight to Moscow by officers of the FSB security service.
Kolker was a doctor of physics and mathematics. The family said he had been accused of collaborating with security services in China, where he had previously given scientific lectures. They protested his innocence.