Just hours after posting my regular weekly status report on Russia’s political hostages today, I was saddened to read of yet another U.S. citizen being held for alleged criminal violations. And this case presents a different twist, as the prisoner has now been forcibly admitted to a Russian psychiatric hospital.

In a country where criminal charges are frequently concocted out of thin air for political purposes, it is difficult — and sometimes impossible — to separate fact from fiction. But here is what is known about Joseph Tater.

He was arrested in August of 2024 following a confrontation in an upscale Moscow hotel (unnamed). He allegedly became abusive and “behaved aggressively” when asked to see his documents. He was refused accommodation at the hotel, and police were called; he later is said to have grabbed the arm of a police officer, which constitutes assault. [Associated Press, April 6, 2025.]

According to Russia’s TASS news agency, at a court hearing in September, Tater claimed to have come to Russia seeking political asylum because he was being persecuted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He was scheduled to stand trial on April 14th of this year on charges of assaulting a police officer, which carries a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment. [Id.]

The tale gets a big murky here. A Moscow court has ordered Tater admitted “non-voluntarily” to a psychiatric hospital on the basis of a medical evaluation on March 15th, when doctors described him as displaying signs of “tension, impulsivity, persecutory delusions, and lack of self-awareness regarding his condition.” [Id.]

Yet TASS had previously reported that he had been released from pretrial detention at the end of March. The two reports are obviously contradictory, and it is unclear when the court’s decision was actually rendered, or whether he ever was released at all.

In any event, Tater is reportedly now living in the hell of a Russian psychiatric ward — a common practice in Soviet times that, according to human rights groups, is being increasingly employed by Vladimir Putin’s regime. His defense attorney has appealed his hospitalization on the grounds that it is an attempt to “isolate the defendant from society.”
[Id.]

*. *. *

The main question, to my mind, is not whether Joseph Tater did or did not lay hands on a police officer, which would be a legitimate criminal charge to be sorted out in the April 14th hearing; but why he was given a psychiatric evaluation in the first place. Was he indeed showing signs of “tension, impulsivity, persecutory delusions, and lack of self-awareness regarding his condition”? And if so, were these signs truly abnormal, or merely the result of being held incommunicado in a Russian prison . . . a situation that might drive any normal person to behave irrationally?

Or is this just another case of political persecution, merely using an alternative means of holding him prisoner for a longer period of time? And if so, why not simply wait another eight days and find him guilty of the original assault charge?

This is an odd case, and one in which the subject may actually be “guilty” of behaving as accused. But if so, and if he does indeed exhibit clear symptoms of psychiatric abnormality, it then becomes a question of whether he is being properly treated.

Having already been declared mentally unstable (for lack of a more scientific diagnosis), should he not immediately be returned to the United States for treatment? Or will the Russian courts still try him on the assault charge, slap some convenient label on him such as “paranoid schizophrenic,” and lock him away indefinitely in a place designed to drive him completely insane?

*. *. *

Joseph Tater is in a desperate situation, more complicated than the others we have been following. Rest assured, I will be searching for updates.

In the meantime, another name is added to the list.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/6/25