Ex-US marine, Paul Whelan, has been sentenced to 16 years of hard labour on spying charges in Russia.
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He was arrested in a hotel room in Moscow, the Russian capital, 18 months ago with a USB flash drive, which security officers say contained state secrets.
The Moscow City Court found him guilty of receiving classified information.
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Whelan – who is also a citizen of the United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland – denounced the closed trial as a “sham” ahead of the verdict.
The US ambassador to Moscow, John Sullivan, condemned the trial as unfair and lacking transparency, and said the conviction would harm Russia-US relations.
“This secret trial in which no evidence was produced is an egregious violation of human rights and international legal norms,” an embassy spokeswoman said.
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After Monday’s verdict, Whelan’s family said in a statement it was the Russian legal system which had been “found guilty of injustice”.
“The court’s decision merely completes the final piece of this broken judicial process. We had hoped that the court might show some independence but, in the end, Russian judges are political, not legal, entities,” the statement said.
The family also said they understood Whelan’s lawyers may lodge an appeal within two weeks, and called on the US government and president to immediately take steps to bring him home.
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Whelan was born in Canada to British parents and moved to the US as a child.
Military records show he joined the US Marine Reserves in 1994, about six years after he had reportedly begun work as a police officer in Michigan.
He went on two tours to Iraq, in 2004 and then 2006. It was while serving in the marines that he made his first trip to Russia, and went on to visit the country many times.
BBC
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