![]() 2023 In practice, purely criminal investigations involving Americans and without any nexus to national security - such as espionage or international terrorism - are a small part of how the FBI has used Section 702. 2023 In recent years, China has arrested and detained dozens of Chinese and foreign nationals on suspicion of espionage, including an executive at Japanese drugmaker Astellas Pharma in March. 2023 Cyber attacks targeting China’s key information infrastructure in connection with spy agencies are also categorized as espionage under the new changes. This has been corrected to 2018.Recent Examples on the Web The Norwegian government announced in April the expulsions of 15 Russian diplomatic staffers suspected of espionage Russia expelled 10 Norwegian diplomats in response. This article was amended on 17 June 2020 because an earlier version mistakenly quoted Vladimir Zherebenkov as referring to December 28, 2017. ![]() I want to say that our president is absolutely sane about this. “If Trump releases one of ours then I’m sure that ours will release someone too,” he said in November. Zherebenkov has previously told the Guardian that he expected the Kremlin to seek a trade for his client after his conviction. Russia then said that it was too early to discuss Whelan because he had not yet been convicted or sentenced. Russia last year said it had told the US who it would be willing to swap for Yaroshenko. The sentencing is seen as the likely precursor to a prisoner swap, as occurred in an unusual three-way swap including Norway and Lithuania in November. “The Russian government has been clear, through statements from the ministry of foreign affairs, that it expected to extract concessions but that Paul’s inclusion in those discussion would only happen after a conviction. “Our family will continue to fight for Paul’s release,” he wrote. “We had hoped that the court might show some independence but, in the end, Russian judges are political, not legal, entities.” “The court’s decision merely completes the final piece of this broken judicial process,” David Whelan wrote in an email. Whelan’s brother David said that his family had looked for help from the US government and Trump, describing the US president as the person “who alone can act to bring Paul home”. I don’t know whether he will be exchanged for Bout only, or for Yaroshenko as well,” he said, referring to the Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was sentenced to 20 years on drug charges in the United States after being extradited from Liberia. “I have also heard off the record about a proposal to carry out the exchange, instead of pardoning him. “On the day Whelan was detained, December 28, 2018, he was told by FSB officers that he would be exchanged for Bout no one kept that a secret,” Zherebenkov told reporters. His Russian lawyer, Vladimir Zherebenkov, said he could be exchanged for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer currently serving a 25-year sentence in a US prison. Whelan has complained of mistreatment in custody and said during Monday’s verdict that he had no interpreter and did not know what decision had been announced. He also held up a piece of paper on which he denounced the proceedings as a “sham trial” and asked for Donald Trump and the leaders of Britain, Canada and Ireland to take “decisive action”, according to Reuters. “This is all political theatre!” Whelan yelled from a glass box in the Moscow courtroom where he was convicted and sentenced on Monday. He has claimed that he was framed by an acquaintance that he met online and his family has said he was a victim of “entrapment” by a Russian intelligence officer. ![]() Whelan was arrested in a hotel in Moscow in late 2018 while he was preparing to attend a wedding and accused of obtaining “state secrets” on a flash drive. He also holds British, Canadian, and Irish passports. Whelan is the first American to be convicted on espionage charges since the end of the Soviet Union. “The United States is outraged by the decision of a Russian court today to convict US citizen Paul Whelan after a secret trial, with secret evidence, and without appropriate allowances for defence witnesses,” the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said in statement on Monday.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |