Russian National Butina Held In US Custody Finally Managed To Contact Family - Father

Fahad Shabbir (@FahadShabbir) Published January 22, 2019 | 11:57 AM

Russian citizen Maria Butina, who remains in custody in the United States, has finally managed to call her family after being unable to contact her relatives by phone for over a week, Maria's father, Valery Butin, said

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd January, 2019) Russian citizen Maria Butina, who remains in custody in the United States, has finally managed to call her family after being unable to contact her relatives by phone for over a week, Maria's father, Valery Butin, said.

On Monday, Butina's father told the Russian Izvestia newspaper that he could not speak with his daughter for more than seven days, adding that such problems were too frequent to be explained by technical glitches or considered a coincidence.

"She [Maria] contacted her mother today," Valery Butin told the Rossiya 24 broadcaster, adding, though, that there were no guarantees that she would be able to regularly reach her family by phone in the future.

Valery Butin also noted that no one could still explain why his daughter could not get in touch with her relatives until now.

"She tries to call [us], and she has been trying to do so for a week, but she could not reach our family [by phone]," the father said.

Butina was arrested in Washington, DC in mid-July last year on suspicion of working as a foreign agent for the Russian government. The young woman initially denied the charges, but in December 2018, she agreed to cooperate with the prosecution and pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to act as a foreign agent. The Russian national now faces up to five years in prison, instead of the initial 15.

Commenting on Butina's case, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he did not see any reason for the United States to bring charges against her, arguing that the woman was not charged with any mission by the Russian government. The Russian Foreign Ministry, in turn, said that the United States had browbeaten Butina into confessing the crime she had not committed by creating unbearable detention conditions and threatening her with a long prison sentence.