The court sent the scientist Sergey Abramov for a psychiatric examination

Scientist, supercomputer specialist Sergey Abramov, accused of financing an extremist organization, is being sent to an inpatient psychiatric examination.

The decision was taken by the Leninsky District Court of Yaroslavl, the publication “T-invariant” reported on Thursday with reference to the scientist himself. It follows from the message that Abramov will spend three weeks in a local psychiatric hospital, during which doctors will check his sanity.

As noted by T-invariant, the publication reported on Tuesday that they decided to send a major academic leader to a psychiatric hospital after 8 months of investigation. The editors also write about “fruitless attempts to prove the fact of the financing of an extremist organization.”

For almost 19 years, Abramov headed the Institute of Program Systems named after A.K. Ailamazyan of the Russian Academy of Sciences and was the scientific leader of the Russian program for the development of supercomputers under the joint project of Moscow and Minsk. Several of the systems developed under his leadership were included in the list of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers. In 2015, he became a laureate of the Lebedev Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences for outstanding work in the field of computer systems development.

The investigation claims that Abramov transferred money to one of the organizations banned in Russia. It is not known what organization the scientist is accused of financing, but his name appeared in one of the lists of supporters of the Alexei Navalny Fight Against Corruption Fund published online. This organization was recognized by Russian courts as extremist and banned in 2021.

According to the article, Abramov faces up to 8 years in prison. On April 10, the scientist was searched, after which he spent more than a day in a pre-trial detention center and was then placed under house arrest. Now Sergey Abramov is free. The 66-year-old scientist does not admit guilt. He believes that his criminal case is a blow to Russia’s supercomputer industry, as well as evidence of a “huge systemic error” in the management of the country.