Maria Bontsler was threatened with 15 years in prison if she did not testify falsely against a fellow lawyer.

Maria Boncler was threatened with 15 years in prison unless she gave false testimony against a fellow lawyer. This was reported by Slovo Zashchite.

The lawyer is accused under an article about confidential cooperation with a foreign state, but investigators are planning to reclassify the charges as treason.

Meanwhile, FSB officers offered Boncler a pre-trial agreement to “give up” her friend, another lawyer. Boncler’s son, Vyacheslav Medikov, told Slovo Zashchite: “In that case, she supposedly wouldn’t get '15 years'—so the sentence is already set—but below the minimum, or specifically: ‘just two and a half years.’ That’s the ‘chance’ they give her! But my mum can’t set up another person, a father of three children. She simply couldn’t go through with it: ‘Son, otherwise I’ll lose respect for myself.’ And straight afterwards, she warned me about what should be done with her body if she ‘doesn’t survive prison’…”

Maria Boncler was detained at the end of May and remanded in a pre-trial detention centre. She has repeatedly reported pressure from Federal Penitentiary Service staff and denial of medical care. While in custody, she suffered a hypertensive crisis.