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Longer jail term for lawyer convicted of spying for Russia

PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk 06.12.2017 10:52
A lawyer with dual Polish-Russian citizenship convicted of spying for Moscow has had his sentence increased from four to seven years in jail, according to reports.
Photo: Activedia/pixabay.com/CC0 Creative CommonsPhoto: Activedia/pixabay.com/CC0 Creative Commons

The decision was taken by an appeals court in Warsaw at the end of November, a spokesman for the court said on Tuesday, according to Poland’s niezalezna.pl website.

The lawyer, named only as “Stanisław Sz.”, was arrested in October 2014.

The 31-year-old denied spying. He faced a sentence ranging from one to ten years in prison, niezalezna.pl reported.

After a trial that was closed to the public and media, a district court in Warsaw in March found the lawyer guilty of taking part in operations targeting Poland by the GRU Russian foreign military intelligence service, niezalezna.pl added.

Prosecutors had demanded a six-year jail term.

Polish LNG terminal

According to niezalezna.pl, from the beginning of 2012 until he was detained, the lawyer met GRU officers and, after undergoing intelligence training, he promised to perform tasks such as obtaining information, including classified data, about the Polish energy industry, especially about the Świnoujście liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in northwest Poland.

Judge Agnieszka Domańska said in March that the lawyer acted to the detriment of Poland’s “finances, in terms of security, especially energy”.

“The accused knew the real, social and legal consequences of his acts, he knew that his behaviour violated both social and legal norms,” the judge added.

According to niezalezna.pl, Domańska said that Stanisław Sz. agreed to provide Russian intelligence with a classified report by Poland’s Supreme Audit Office on gas deals.

The court also said he infiltrated Polish energy-sector journalists to use them for promoting Russian policy and conducted a propaganda campaign out of his law firm’s office.

(pk/gs)

Source: niezalezna.pl

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