A Moscow judge sentenced a man crippled by spinal muscular atrophy to 4.5 years in prison. The court says he robbed two people.

On Monday, July 10, the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets reported a Moscow district court’s decision to imprison a local man named Anton Mamayev for 4.5 years. The sentence is drawing attention because Mamayev suffers from an illness that has atrophied almost every muscle in his body. Convicted of robbery, Mamayev maintains his innocence and worries that he won’t survive incarceration. Following Moskovsky Komsomolets’ report, government human rights officials have become involved in Mamayev’s case. On July 11, he was transferred to a city hospital, and his lawyer says he hopes to obtain his client’s release from state custody.

On July 10, Moskovsky Komsomolets published a report about a 28-year-old man named Anton Mamayev currently locked up in a detention center, despite his serious illness. Mamayev is almost completely paralyzed with spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic defect that leads to motor loss and progressive muscle wasting, often resulting in early death. Mamayev currently weighs just 18 kilograms (40 pounds), and his only working muscles are in his neck and head, which a caregiver helps him move. (Moskovsky Komsomolets identifies the attendant as a man named Vasily, without giving his surname.) Mamayev was diagnosed with the condition at nine months. Many people with spinal muscular atrophy don’t live past four, and most patients die before they turn 20. Mamayev graduated from the Dashkova Moscow Humanitarian Institute with a degree in economics. Before the trial, he worked from home for different charities, helping to raise funds for children with disabilities. Mamayev is also married with a small daughter.

On June 30, 2017, Moscow’s Timiryazevsky district court judge Sergey Galkin sentenced Mamayev to 4.5 years in prison for robbery. Before being transferred to a state penitentiary, Mamayev was sent a local detention center. State prosecutors say Mamayev and his caregiver Vasily attacked two acquaintances (one of whom served in Russia’s special forces) and stole their motor scooter, threatening reprisal, if they reported it to the police. According to the case materials, Mamayev threatened to “shoot them in the legs, shove them in the trunk of a car, and take them out into the woods,” and promised to “cripple them, cut off their ears, gouge out their eyes, and gun them down.”

According to Mamayev, however, he agreed to buy their motor scooter for 160,000 rubles ($2,630) and planned to resell it later. “[The day of the sale] there wasn’t even any hint of some conflict. To the contrary, everyone was joking, and there’s even a video where the [scooter’s] owners are teaching Vasily how to ride it,” Mamayev told a reporter from Moskovsky Komsomolets and Eva Merkacheva, a member of Russia’s Public Monitoring Committee, who visited Mamayev at the Moscow detention facility. Mamayev suspects that his acquaintances filed the robbery report because of “long-standing bad blood.” “They would often borrow things from me, without ever giving them back,” he said.

Merkacheva told Meduza that state prosecutors asked the judge for an even longer prison sentence: “six or seven years,” she said. Vasily, Mamayev’s caregiver, was sentenced to three years. Merkacheva says Mamayev is certain that he “won’t survive” prison, where he won’t have access to the medical procedures he needs to stay alive.

On Monday, July 10, Merkacheva says she reported Mamayev’s situation to Mikhail Fedotov, the head of Russia’s Presidential Human Rights Council. Fedotov, in turn, sent a request to the Moscow district attorney’s office. By Monday evening, the Attorney General announced that it has begun reviewing the verdict against Mamayev, and the Federal Penitentiary Service promised on July 11 to send him for a medical examination to determine the possibility of further detention. That same day, Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova met with Mamayev’s father. “I’m doing everything I can to help,” she wrote later on Instagram.

Also on Tuesday, Maria Prokhorycheva, a spokesperson for the Timiryazevsky district court, explained the reasoning for such a harsh sentence, saying that Russia’s Criminal Code requires imprisonment in cases of group robbery. Any determination about the perpetrator’s health, Prokhorycheva claimed, should be made by the Federal Penitentiary Service. She added that spinal muscular atrophy isn’t included on Russia’s list of illnesses excusing convicts from incarceration.

On July 11, officials transferred Mamayev to a city hospital, Merhacheva told Meduza. Mamayev’s lawyer, Andrey Orlov, told Meduza that he plans to petition the state for his client’s release. Orlov didn’t offer any details about how he plans to achieve this, saying he’s currently very busy with the matter. “I haven’t slept for three days. I’m taking urgent legal measures to help him survive. Right now I just don’t have time to comment further,” he said.

Russian text by Evgeny Berg, translation by Kevin Rothrock