Russian scientist at Harvard released on bail while awaiting US smuggling trial

BOSTON: A Russian-born scientist at Harvard University who was detained by US immigration authorities in February after returning from a trip to France was granted bail on Thursday and released from custody while she awaits trial on a criminal charge of smuggling frog embryos into the United States.

A federal magistrate judge in Boston released Kseniia Petrova, 30, two weeks after a different judge in Vermont granted her bail in her ongoing immigration case after concluding it appeared she was unlawfully detained.

The May 28 decision by US District Judge Christina Reiss concerned only Petrova’s immigration case, though, and left unresolved the question of whether she would be granted bail in a subsequent criminal case prosecutors filed two weeks earlier.

US Magistrate Judge Judith Dein did just that during a hearing in Boston, after prosecutors dropped an earlier request to detain her, on the condition that she remain in New England while the criminal case is pending. “I just want to thank everybody for supporting me,” Petrova in a video told reporters gathered outside the courthouse.