Camera in the bedroom: The invasive surveillance of the Kremlin opponent

Months before her arrest, police were able to penetrate Anastasia Shevchenko's apartment and install surveillance devices inside her apartment. She is the first to stand trial under a 2015 draconian law that allows authorities to declare "undesirable" organizations. The maximum sentence is six years in prison

Camera in the bedroom: The invasive surveillance of the Kremlin opponent

Russian police have secretly photographed an opposition activist in the bedroom for months before arresting her for a new law against "undesirable organizations." 40-year-old Anastasia Shevchenko is under house arrest for about a year after she was charged with offenses related to her work at a civil organization founded by oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of President Vladimir Putin's prominent opponents.

Attorneys and Shevchenko's family said investigators had discovered her record of re-sleeping in her Rostov home on the southern state don. Lawyer Sergei Badmashin has posted on social networks the court order that allowed police to install eavesdropping and photo shoots in the house, almost five months before she was arrested last January. He said police were somehow able to enter the apartment without identifying them, installing the equipment and taking it months later. "They left no trace," he said.

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Documented in the underwear in the bedroom. Shevchenko (Photo: Reuters)

Anastasia Shevchenko (38), Head of Electoral Campaign for Subcheck Russia, Russia, February 13, 2018. (Photo: Reuters)

The offenses against her have to do with organizing a public lecture and participating in an unauthorized demonstration by the authorities. If convicted, the maximum sentence to be served is six years in prison. She is the first to be prosecuted under a 2015 law that, according to the Kremlin, was intended to fight foreign intervention in the state. It allows the prosecution to declare an "undesirable" organization if it is determined to "pose a threat to Russia's constitutional, security and defense order."

Some human rights organizations consider it a prisoner of conscience. Her little daughter, Walda, said in a Facebook post that her mother had recently been granted permission to review documentation she had seen in her bedroom while she was in her underwear. "Is it embarrassing? Indeed, for law enforcement officials," she wrote.

Russia's defensive opposition is accustomed to the authorities' increasing use of surveillance cameras on police streets and threats, but installing a camera inside a woman's bedroom has shocked many.

Leonid Volkov, a prominent opposition activist, said it was "completely out of place" and said that Putin-era government officials should stand trial and be eliminated from public office on the day the regime changes. Last week, a local court extended Shevchenko's house arrest until March.