MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th July, 2020) Russian investigators believe that the United States was the end recipient of classified information from Ivan Safronov, an adviser to the head of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, lawyer Ivan Pavlov told Sputnik on Tuesday.
A court in Moscow ordered earlier in the day two months in custody for ex-defense journalist Safronov, as a pre-trial restriction, with the official indictment expected on July 13. Lawyer Evgeny Smirnov said that investigators accuse Safronov, who denies the high treason claims against him, of passing information regarding Russia's defense cooperation with Africa and Russia's military activities in the middle East to Czech special services.
"The US is mentioned in the criminal case as the country that received the information from Safronov through the Czech special services," Pavlov said.
According to the attorney, security services have long held Safronov under surveillance before confronting him with charges.
"He was under surveillance for a long time, they collected information on him. The amount of collected information ended up being one single episode, which they failed to explain, so this all is unfounded. The case files also contain his emails and scripts of calls over a long period of time," Pavlov said.
Some of these materials were never made known to the legal team by the prosecutors, as stated by another of Safronov's attorney, Sergey Maliukin.
"The prosecutor has provided several case materials to the judge for review, but the defense was never acquainted with these materials. This includes Safronov's alleged correspondence with the alleged agent. He has not made it known to the lawyers," Maliukin told journalists.
The hearing was held behind the closed doors due to featuring classified information.
