A Russian-born scientist from Harvard Medical School who was accused of smuggling frog embryos into the United States was indicted last Wednesday on additional charges nearly two weeks after her lawyers secured her release from US custody.
Boston prosecutors said a grand jury returned an indictment charging Kseniia Petrova (30), with one count of concealment of a material fact, one count of false statement and one count of smuggling goods into the United States.
In May, she had been charged only with smuggling – she had first denied carrying biological material in her luggage – and the new charges were filed after her lawyers urged a magistrate judge to dismiss the initial criminal complaint last week.
Prosecutors secured the indictment after Petrova was granted bail on 12 June, reports Daily Maverick. She had been detained for months after American immigration authorities took her into custody on 16 February at the airport in Boston upon her return from a trip to France.
Her supporters said she was detained as part of the practice by President Donald Trump’s administration of targeting international students and academics for visa revocations and detention as part of his hardline immigration agenda.
Prosecutors said US Customs and Border Protection agents stopped Petrova after her checked duffle bag was flagged for inspection, revealing the frog embryos.
Petrova has said her boss asked her to bring back frog embryo samples for experiments. But prosecutors said the embryos constituted biological material that should have been declared to customs officials at the port of first arrival.
When she was approached by law enforcement, Petrova had initially denied carrying any biological material in her baggage, then later claimed to be unsure she was required to declare the embryos when entering the United States.
But prosecutors said one of Petrova’s colleagues had texted saying that she needed to make sure she got permission to bring samples back.
Petrova’s visa was then cancelled and immigration officials took her into custody with the intention of deporting her back to Russia, a prospect Petrova has said she feared after protesting Russia’s war in Ukraine.
She works at Harvard’s renowned Kirschner Lab, where she has developed computer scripts to read the images and unlock the full potential of a ground-breaking microscope that could lead to breakthroughs in cancer detection and research into longevity.
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