Israel’s Shin Bet has held Russian-Israeli historian Artem Kirpichenok for more than a month without disclosing why. His family says the case may involve espionage.

Historian and writer Artem Kirpichenok flew to Tel Aviv on August 2 to attend an international conference, his support group said. Officers from Israel’s General Security Service (Shin Bet) detained him at the airport. Kirpichenok, a citizen of both Russia and Israel, has remained in custody ever since. Officials have not disclosed the reason for his detention.

Little is known about Artem Kirpichenok’s case. Israeli authorities may suspect him of espionage.

Family representatives told Meduza that, based on “unofficial information,” investigators suspect Kirpichenok of espionage and of contacting an agent of a foreign intelligence service.

But “there’s no Arab angle [to the case],” the source said. According to the source, the agent Kirpichenok allegedly contacted is not from Lebanon or Iran.

“Who could it be, then? If it’s Russia, the whole case is built on sand, as Israelis say. He’s a Russian citizen who has lived in Russia permanently since 2005. And Russia is hardly a stranger to Israel: the two countries conduct joint intelligence operations and share information despite friction over Iran and other issues,” the source told Meduza.

The alleged offenses are considered serious, according to the source, but even Kirpichenok’s lawyer does not know exactly what he is accused of. Israeli law has more than a dozen statutes that can apply in espionage cases, with penalties of up to life imprisonment.

“The fact that someone is held in a Shin Bet detention facility indicates that the person is suspected of crimes against state security,” a representative of Kirpichenok’s family said.

A separate charge may stem from Kirpichenok’s 2018 trip to Iran, which he wrote about on social media at the time. Israel considers Iran an enemy state, and traveling there without special permission from the Israeli Interior Ministry carries a prison sentence of up to four years.

Nika Dubrovskaya, an artist and friend of Kirpichenok’s, told the outlet Bumaga that he visited Israel several times after his trip to Iran without running into problems at the border. Another friend of Kirpichenok’s told Meduza the account was accurate and said the historian had also visited Israel the previous winter, before his August trip.

He rented out his apartment in Ashkelon, which was one reason he returned to the country several times a year.

Kirpichenok’s research and columns

Kirpichenok, 51, holds a Doctor of Sciences degree and works as a journalist and researcher specializing in the Middle East and Central Asia. A family representative told Meduza that he is cautious — an “armchair scholar” who dislikes fieldwork.

A friend of Kirpichenok’s told Meduza that she met him in Israel in the mid-1990s, when she was living there and he was still studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She said that after he graduated, Kirpichenok could not find work in his field in Israel and was “very unhappy.”

Kirpichenok, a St. Petersburg native, returned to Russia in the 2000s and inherited an apartment there, she said. During those years, he worked as a tour guide, gave lectures, and wrote articles: “He worked with all kinds of publications and held, I’d say, Trotskyist views. Some minor grassroots activity: tours, and during COVID, he developed routes like ‘Sick Petersburg.’ A kind of intellectual precariat.”

Drawing on his dissertation about Hungarian nationalist movements at the turn of the 20th century, Kirpichenok wrote a book titled Vengriya-1956: drugoy vzglyad (“Hungary-1956: A Different View”). Kirpichenok criticized the 1956 Hungarian uprising, viewing it not as a progressive movement against the Soviet regime but as a far-right conservative revolt.

In recent years, Kirpichenok headed the Slavic studies department at the Center for Arab-Eurasian Studies, which was founded by Amr Abdel-Hamid, an Egyptian journalist, media manager, and former head of Al Jazeera’s Moscow bureau.

He also wrote about the Middle East for the Turkish broadcaster TRT and the Azerbaijani outlet Caliber, sharply criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s actions in Gaza, and its policies toward Palestinians.

In his book Izrail’. Put’ k katastrofe (“Israel: The Road to Catastrophe”), Kirpichenok says Israel is not “the revived state of the Jewish people” but “the last bastion of Western colonialism.”

“Artem never wrote anything that went beyond what he read in the newspaper Haaretz and a couple dozen other sources, like B’Tselem,” his friend said. “I mean, some criticism of the existing regime. Geez, that exists in every country, and it’s a good thing — that’s what the intelligentsia is for.”

She was surprised by the possibility of espionage charges: “He doesn’t have any [classified] information. How would he have access to any?”

Kirpichenok flew to Israel for an academic conference — but officials in the city where it was supposed to take place had never heard of it

Kirpichenok is now being held in a Shin Bet pretrial detention facility in Petah Tikva.

He is alone in a cell where the lights stay on around the clock, with no outdoor exercise and no access to reading or writing materials. “All he can do in his cell is sit or lie down, sleep, or think,” a family representative said.

“Before October 7, 2023, only Arab Muslims were subjected to this kind of repression,” a representative of Kirpichenok’s family told Meduza.

A support group of Kirpichenok’s friends believes the international conference may have been a trap set by security services to get the scholar into the country, according to the independent Russian outlet Doxa. Kirpichenok arrived in Israel on August 2 and had planned to leave six days later.

Representatives of Kirpichenok’s family contacted the municipality of the city where the conference was supposedly scheduled to take place, but officials there said no such event had been held. The family said Kirpichenok avoided answering questions about exactly who had invited him to Israel.

Israeli security officers pressured Kirpichenok, according to a family representative

The fourth court hearing in Kirpichenok’s case took place in Ashkelon on Thursday, August 27. The proceedings are closed to the public.

Kirpichenok was brought to court from the pretrial detention facility. Family representatives said he was held in a soundproof glass booth during the hearing. His lawyer, Inna Lebedinskaya-Katz, was unable to speak with her client during the proceedings, a Meduza source said. (Lebedinskaya-Katz declined to comment, citing a court order barring publication of details about Kirpichenok’s case.)

That day, the court extended the gag order on details of Kirpichenok’s case through August 31. A formal declaration of charges — roughly equivalent to an indictment in Russian legal procedure — was due to be filed on September 4. At that point, the defense would be able to access the investigation files, a family representative told Meduza. The family representative expects prosecutors to seek Kirpichenok’s continued detention through the end of the trial.

At the hearing, Lebedinskaya-Katz asked the court to exclude her client’s confession, arguing that Kirpichenok had been pressured into making it. Israel Shamir, a left-wing Israeli writer and columnist covering the case, said on Telegram that Lebedinskaya-Katz had filed the motion.

Kirpichenok had not been allowed to contact his lawyer, a family representative told Meduza. His only meeting with his defense attorney came on August 23, when he told Lebedinskaya-Katz that he had falsely incriminated himself “under pressure from investigators.”

During that meeting, Kirpichenok, in handcuffs, was held in a glass booth and spoke with his lawyer by phone. He feared the conversation might be monitored and worried that he would “be sent back down to the basement” where the interrogations took place, a family representative told Meduza.

Investigators allegedly threatened to confiscate his apartment in Israel and deport him to Ukraine. “He never supported the ‘special military operation’ that Russia launched, but because he holds left-wing views, he has spoken out against imperialism, including Russian imperialism,” a family representative told Meduza. There is no independent confirmation that investigators pressured Kirpichenok.

At the August 27 hearing, Kirpichenok “looked much worse” than he had when he met with his lawyer. According to Shamir, the defense attorney said: “His face seemed to sag, his eyes were dull, and he could barely smile.”

Lebedinskaya-Katz asked the court to move Kirpichenok from pretrial detention to house arrest because he has an apartment in Ashkelon, but the judge denied the request, citing the severity of the charges.

Kirpichenok also asked for an interpreter at future hearings — a request that surprised representatives of his family, since he had begun living in Israel as a teenager, served in the Israel Defense Forces, and later graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The lawyer asked the court to allow a psychiatrist to see her client, citing his depressed state and post-traumatic stress disorder.

How Russia reacted to Kirpichenok’s detention

“The irony of Artem’s situation is that he holds two toxic passports. Neither country is particularly eager to stand up for him, you know?” the historian’s friend told Meduza.

Kirpichenok’s support group only recently contacted Russia’s Foreign Ministry, and Russian diplomats “have been emphatic in promising their support,” a family representative told Meduza. But because Kirpichenok also holds Israeli citizenship, Russian Embassy staff have not yet been allowed to see him.

Russia’s ambassador to Israel, Anatoly Viktorov, said the diplomatic mission “had sent a request to the appropriate Israeli authorities.”

Valery Fadeev, head of the Presidential Human Rights Council, sent a letter to Matthew Gillett, chair-rapporteur of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, on August 28. In the letter, Fadeev said: “In Israel, this kind of detention is usually linked to suspected crimes against state security.”

“This suggests that his detention was motivated by [Kirpichenok’s] political views,” the letter says. “Of particular concern is his health: he suffers from hypertension with a risk of retinal detachment, which requires constant medical monitoring.”

The Presidential Human Rights Council called on the United Nations to demand that Israeli authorities clarify the grounds for Kirpichenok’s detention and ensure that he has immediate access to a lawyer and qualified medical care.

Shin Bet had not responded to Meduza’s request for comment as of publication.