Olga Zelenina in the dock (Image: Andrey Stenin/RIA Novosti/AFP)

Olga Zelenina, a chemist at the Penza Scientific Research Institute of Agriculture in Russia, has been released from the Moscow jail in which she had been held, alongside a member of the punk band Pussy Riot, since mid-August – but she still faces trial. Her crime? Apparently “doing her job”.

Zelenina had been asked, as an independent expert witness, to analyse imported poppy seeds as part of a drug-smuggling case against a Russian businessman. The prosecution claimed that the seeds, ostensibly imported for food uses, were actually intended for the illegal narcotics market.

But her analysis, commissioned by defence lawyers in the case, found negligible traces of illegal substances. These traces, she said, could be explained by natural mixing of other scraps of poppy plants with the seeds. She was arrested and imprisoned, charged with aiding and abetting a smuggling ring.

Despite Zelenina’s release this week after a hearing on Tuesday, she will still face a court case.


“No one should charge scientists simply for giving their scientific opinions,” says Natalia Andreeva, Zelenina’s lawyer. “It’s terrible.”

Mikhail Gelfand of the Institute for Information Transmission Problems in Moscow says he is one of more than 350 scientists, including several members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who have signed a petition backing her case.