Robert Gilman Near Death in Russian Custody After 6 Weeks in Dissociative Stupor
Updated
Updated · CNN · Aug 7
Robert Gilman Near Death in Russian Custody After 6 Weeks in Dissociative Stupor
3 articles · Updated · CNN · Aug 7
Summary
Six weeks after falling into a dissociative stupor, 32-year-old American detainee Robert Gilman is tube-fed, handcuffed to a civilian hospital bed and described by his family’s advocate as “near death.”
Global Reach says Gilman was subjected to physical and psychological torture, including forced psychotropic drugs and false claims that his family was beaten and the United States had abandoned him.
Russia has barred both Gilman’s lawyer and his mother from seeing him since his transfer from a prison hospital about six hours outside Moscow, deepening fears he could already be dead or severely incapacitated.
The State Department said it is deeply concerned, has repeatedly raised the case with Moscow and requested Gilman’s release on humanitarian grounds; the family says Marco Rubio also pressed Sergey Lavrov in late July.
Gilman has been detained since January 2022 and is one of several Americans still held in Russia, making his condition a fresh test of U.S.-Russia ties if he dies in custody.