MOSCOW: A Russian court on Monday sentenced a French researcher to three years in a penal colony after finding him guilty of breaching a “foreign agent” law. The trial of Laurent Vinatier, who works for a Swiss conflict mediation NGO, comes amid tensions between Russia and the West over the Ukraine war.
The 48-year-old was arrested in Moscow in June and charged with gathering information on Russia´s military without being registered as a “foreign agent”. Judge Natalya Cheprasova at Moscow´s Zamoskvoretsky district court ruled that Vinatier was guilty and sentenced him to three years in a penal colony, two years less than the maximum possible sentence, an AFP journalist in the courtroom heard.