The Moscow Regional Court has detained the chief doctor of the Kaliningrad Maternity Hospital No. 4, Elena Belaya, and the resuscitator of the Kaliningrad Perinatal Center, Elina Sushkevich, for the duration of the retrial of their criminal case. The doctors are accused of killing a premature baby. The jury had previously acquitted the doctors, but in May the appeals court overturned the verdict.
Lawyer Andrey Zolotukhin informed Novy Kaliningrad about the fact that Sushkevich and Belaya were sent to pre-trial detention. On Monday, the first hearing in the case of the Kaliningrad doctor accused of killing a newborn in November 2018 was held in the Moscow regional court. According to the lawyer, both the prosecutor’s office and the representative of the victim submitted applications for the imposition of preventive measures.
“The court has given practically all the reasons – that they can hide, that they can exert pressure during the trial, that they are charged with a particularly serious crime,” Zolotukhin said. “But the most cynical, of course, in my opinion, is the fact that it was specially emphasized that both defendants do not live in the Moscow region, and yet the jurisdiction was not changed at their whim.”
In December 2020, the Kaliningrad Regional Court acquitted the acting chief physician of the Maternity Hospital No. 4 in Kaliningrad, Belaya, and the anesthesiologist-resuscitator of the Regional Perinatal Center, Sushkevich, on the basis of the jury’s verdict. In May of this year, the First Appeal Court of General Jurisdiction overturned the verdict and sent the case back for reconsideration. It is now being considered by the Moscow Regional Court.
White was initially charged over the death of an infant at Maternity Hospital No. 4. She was accused of exceeding her official authority, with serious consequences. First she was sent to the pre-trial detention center (SIZO). After the professional community lobbied on her behalf and the governor of the Kaliningrad region, Anton Alikhanov, appealed to the investigators to mitigate her detention, she was released from the isolation ward under house arrest.
Elena Belaya was first accused of abuse of power, and then – of organizing a murder. We explain quickly, simply, and clearly what happened, why it matters, and what will happen next. The Episodes End of story. Podcast advertising. In June 2019, the Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR) opened another criminal case – for organizing the murder of a minor. At the same time, doctor Sushkevich was arrested. She was also placed under house arrest. The child whose death led to the investigation was born on November 6, 2018. His mother, 27-year-old Uzbek citizen Zamira Akhmedova, gave birth in her sixth month of pregnancy. The baby was born weighing 700 grams. According to the investigation, the acting head doctor of the maternity hospital, Belaya, after receiving information from the attending doctors about the child’s critical condition, understood that his death would worsen the statistics, which could “negatively affect her further appointment as head doctor. For this reason, and wanting to save resources in the maternity hospital, Bela “decided to kill the newborn,” claimed the investigation.
According to investigators, Bela instructed not to provide the premature baby with an expensive drug, and when he died – to forge its documents. “The investigation stated: ‘In order to commit the murder of the minor, Belaya enlisted the help of doctor Sushkevich, who arrived as part of the resuscitation team to provide medical assistance to the child and to transport him to the perinatal center, with whom she had previously discussed the method of killing the child.'” According to the Investigative Committee of Russia, reanimatologist Sushkevich administered a lethal dose of the drug “magnesium sulfate”, after which the infant died. “In addition, at the direction of Belaya, in order to conceal the murder of the minor, deliberately false information was given, indicating that there was a case of intranatal death, i.e. the death of the fetus,” reads one of the statements of the Investigative Committee. Sushkevich was eventually charged with murder, while Belaya was charged with organizing it.
The lower court submitted the following question to the jury: “Is it proven that on November 6, 2018, in the maternity ward No. 4, 10 ml of the drug “magnesium sulfate” was administered to a newborn through an umbilical catheter, which resulted in the newborn’s death from poisoning? The jury answered negatively. Then the Investigative Committee of Russia stated that “emotional judgments prevailed over legally established facts and expert conclusions. The representative of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Svetlana Petrenko, claimed that magnesium sulfate was administered to the child immediately before death, while investigators have determined that false information was provided in the birth history that the child was stillborn.
The criminal case against the doctors has generated a great deal of publicity. Many representatives of the medical community, as well as parents of children saved by the doctors, have expressed their support. The Russian Community of Neonatologists, which expressed its support for Sushkevich, stated that the child was born with “extremely low body weight” in an extremely critical condition and could have died at any moment.