Student detained in Russia

A UM-St. Louis student is facing a trial in Russia this week. If found guilty, Roxana Contreras, a physics student from Chile, could spend seven years in a Russian prison.

Contreras, 29, was on her way home from visiting friends in Voronezh, Russia on June 13, when she was stopped at customs for having Soviet era war medals and some old Russian currency in her luggage.

Contreras' thesis advisor Sonya Bahar, director of the Center for Neurodynamics at UM-St. Louis said, "Her description, which was maybe not too clear because she was just so terribly upset, was that she was pulled aside with 10 custom agents all yelling at her in Russian."

According to Bahar, Contreras speaks decent Russian and studied in Voronezh in 2001 and 2002.

"She lived there for a year. She speaks Russian, but not completely fluently, and she hadn't been to Russia in five or six years," Bahar said.

The customs agents took away her passport and told Contreras that she might face jail time.

"They also told her not to contact her consulate," Bahar said. That was "one of the most terrifying and disturbing things" about Contreras experience with the customs agents.

"They said they wanted to try and help her without involving the police," Bahar said. "We didn't know if it was at that moment that they wanted a bribe," Bahar said.

Contreras did not contact her consulate until a few days after being told that she could not leave Voronezh.

"They've been very sweet and helpful," Bahar said of the Chilean consulate, Sergio Valdés. "But they haven't really been able to do too much as far as I can tell. They've given her a lot of conflicting advice."

Valdés told her she would have to stay with her friends in Voronezh and advised that she could not leave their residence without one of them accompanying her.

"She was initially told for about the first week that she was basically under house arrest," Bahar said.

When the charges against Contreras were brought to the police, the original charges included numerous errors concerning the crime and Contreras' personal information.

"There are some really gross errors in the original charges. We're talking about describing one of the medals as a thirty year anniversary medal of the Great Patriotic War, which was World War II, issued in 1947, which doesn't make sense," Bahar said.

The charges also misspelled Contreras place of nationality Chile, as "Santiago, Chili" and charged her for "a willful illegal acquisition of USSR state honors, i.e. the crime under the article 324 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code."

Article 324 of the RFCC states the illegal acquisition and selling of official documents such as the medals is punishable by fines, not seven years in prison.

Bahar said Roxana Contreras has never claimed she did not buy the medals, only that she did not know it was illegal.

Bahar was asked to send a character reference letter to the police investigator to vouch for Contreras. "So I thought OK, fine, I'm going to get everybody to write a letter," Bahar said.

Faculty members from the physics department, the chancellor of UM-St. Louis and colleagues from all over the world sent letters to Nikolai Serenko, the Russian police investigator who had dominion over Contreras' case.

After they received the letters, Serenko began to threaten Contreras with extending an already tedious investigation. Bahar and her colleagues received letters from Valdes saying "no noise" about Contreras situation for fear that such letters would do more harm than good.

After the investigation was completed, Serenko became convinced that Contreras was not guilty of deliberately breaking Russian law.

Contreras has been in contact with her lawyer Aleksei Andreevich Andreeshev, who attempted to negotiate for Contreras' freedom on the basis that she claimed herself guilty of purchasing illegal items under the idea that Contreras did not know she was breaking the law.

According to Bahar, cases where tourists are stopped with such contraband are rarely handled in this manner. "Normally, the medals were taken out of the tourists' luggage and they were told 'Sorry, you can't take these out of the country,' but they have never not been allowed to get on their flight," Bahar said.

After a trial date was set for Tuesday, Aug. 28 in Ramon, Russia, at 10 a.m. Russian time, which is 1 a.m. St. Louis time, Bahar and supporters of Contreras are convinced that any publicity is good publicity.

"There is a news storm over in Chile," Bahar said. The story has also been covered in the "Moscow Times."

During Governor Matt Blunt's appearance at UM-St. Louis, Contreras' issue was brought up. Blunt has been cited as saying he would speak to his father about the matter.

United States Representative for Missouri Todd Akin has sent letters to Russian Ambassador Yuri Ushakov. Gordon Lamb, interim president of the UM system has also sent a letter.

Bahar, as well as many of Contreras' friends and colleagues hope to have Contreras home by the end of the week.

"Hopefully, the judge presides over her case with a cleared mind, and we'll have Roxana home soon," Bahar said.

For more information log on to www.facebook.com and visit groups: "Free Roxana From Russia" or "Support Roxana Contreras."