MOSCOW: A Russian former employee of the US consulate in Russia’s Far Eastern city of Vladivostok has been sentenced to four years and ten months in prison for “secret collaboration with a foreign state,” Russian agencies said Friday.
Robert Shonov worked for more than 25 years for the US consulate until 2021, when Moscow imposed restrictions on local staff working for foreign missions.
Afterward, he worked as a private contractor compiling press accounts from publicly accessible Russian media, according to the US State Department.
He was arrested this year on suspicion of passing secret information about Russia’s war in Ukraine to the United States in exchange for money.
According to the judgment published on the website of Valdivostok’s Primorye court, 400,000 roubles (€4,000) and an electronic device linked to the commission of the offense were seized.
In September 2023, Russia also expelled two US diplomats it accused of acting as liaison agents for Shonov.
According to Washington, Shonov had only been hired by the US consulate to carry out routine monitoring of freely accessible Russian media.
In recent years, several US citizens have been arrested and sentenced to long jail terms in Russia. Others are being held pending trial.
Washington, which supports Ukraine militarily and financially against Russia’s invasion, accuses Moscow of wanting to exchange them for Russians held in the United States.
The United States and Russia exchanged prisoners including The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in a landmark swap in August, but several US nationals and dual nationals remain in detention in Russia.
Russia hands former US consulate employee nearly 5-year jail term
https://arab.news/4wb4s
Russia hands former US consulate employee nearly 5-year jail term
- Robert Shonov worked for more than 25 years for the US consulate until 2021, when Moscow imposed restrictions on local staff working for foreign missions
Venezuela parliament unanimously approves amnesty law
CARACAS: Venezuela’s National Assembly on Thursday unanimously approved a long-awaited amnesty law that could free hundreds of political prisoners jailed for being government detractors.
But the law excludes those who have been prosecuted or convicted of promoting military action against the country — which could include opposition leaders like Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, who has been accused by the ruling party of calling for international intervention like the one that ousted former president Nicolas Maduro.
The bill now goes before interim president Delcy Rodriguez, who pushed for the legislation under pressure from Washington, after she rose to power following Maduro’s capture during a US military raid on January 3.
The law is meant to apply retroactively to 1999 — including the coup against previous leader Hugo Chavez, the 2002 oil strike, and the 2024 riots against Maduro’s disputed reelection — giving hope to families that loved ones will finally come home.
Some fear, however, the law could be used by the government to pardon its own and selectively deny freedom to real prisoners of conscience.
Article 9 of the bill lists those excluded from amnesty as “persons who are being prosecuted or may be convicted for promoting, instigating, soliciting, invoking, favoring, facilitating, financing or participating in armed actions or the use of force against the people, sovereignty, and territorial integrity” of Venezuela “by foreign states, corporations or individuals.”
Venezuela’s National Assembly had delayed several sittings meant to pass the amnesty bill.
“The scope of the law must be restricted to victims of human rights violations and expressly exclude those accused of serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity, including state, paramilitary and non-state actors,” UN human rights experts said in a statement from Geneva Thursday.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Venezuelans have been jailed in recent years over plots, real or imagined, to overthrow the government of Rodriguez’s predecessor and former boss Maduro, who was in the end toppled in the deadly US military raid.
Family members have reported torture, maltreatment and untreated health problems among the inmates.
The NGO Foro Penal says about 450 prisoners have been released since Maduro’s ouster, but more than 600 others remain behind bars.
Family members have been clamoring for their release for weeks, holding vigils outside prisons.
One small group, in the capital Caracas, staged a nearly weeklong hunger strike which ended Thursday.
“The National Assembly has the opportunity to show whether there truly is a genuine will for national reconciliation,” Foro Penal director Gonzalo Himiob wrote on X Thursday ahead of the vote.
On Wednesday, the chief of the US military command responsible for strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats off South America held talks in Caracas with Rodriguez and top ministers Vladimir Padrino and Diosdado Cabello .
All three were staunch Maduro backers who for years echoed his “anti-imperialist” rhetoric.
Rodriguez’s interim government has been governing with US President Donald Trump’s consent, provided she grants access to Venezuela’s vast oil resources.
