MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th March, 2021) Moscow city court affirmed the decision to extend by two months the arrest of Ivan Safronov, an adviser to the head of Russia's state-run space corporation Roscosmos, who is accused of passing military secrets to a NATO country, the court told Sputnik.
On March 2, Moscow's Lefortovo Court granted the prosecutor's motion and agreed to prolong the detention of Safronov for two months, until May 7. The defense team demanded his release.
"The court dismissed the appeals and affirmed the previous ruling as legal and reasonable," the court said.
The inquiry into Safronov's treason case may wrap in summer, his lawyer Ivan Pavlov told Sputnik in beginning of March.
Former journalist and adviser to the head of Russia's space agency, Safronov was arrested on July 7, 2020. According to his defense team, the FSB security agency suspects Safronov has been sharing classified data on Russian arms export to Africa with the Czech intelligence, which passed it on to the US. Safronov denies all accusations.
Roscosmos insists that the alleged leak is not in any way related to Safronov's advisory role in the agency. However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the case had nothing to do with journalism either.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in turn, stated that Safronov's case was not politically motivated and that the leak was a confirmed fact, whether it was intentional or not.
