Investigative actions completed in the case of journalist Ivan Safronov, accused of high treason

FSB investigators have completed the collection of evidence in a criminal case of high treason, initiated against journalist Ivan Safronov, reported source of “Interfax”.

“Currently, the accused and his lawyers have begun to familiarize themselves with the materials,” added the agency’s interlocutor. It took almost a year and a half to collect evidence in the case. The journalist spent all this time in a pre-trial detention center.

On October 31, one of the journalist’s lawyers, Dmitry Talantov, said that he had appealed in court as violating the constitutional right to defense of the investigator’s ban on making any notes while studying the case materials.

“Do I have the right, getting acquainted with such materials, to record my thoughts, position, plans in the“ non-secret ”, not selected by the investigator, part of my lawyer’s proceedings? Provided they don’t even come close to secret factual matters. Well, for example, write down: “To study the issue of assigning production to a specific expert when assigning an examination to an institution.” Of course, yes. Since it doesn’t smell like a state here, ”- wrote defender.

According to the lawyer, in practice the investigator “simply does not allow him to take a pen and a sheet of paper in his hand.” “And if I do make the most innocuous note – (the investigator) tears out the sheet and adds it to the“ secret ”notebook, which he locks in the safe,” added Talantov.

He also noted that “only materials of secret examinations exceed 1000 sheets.”

Safronov, who currently remains in the position of adviser to the head of Roscosmos, has been charged with high treason. He was detained on July 7, 2020 and placed under arrest by a court decision.

As Safronov’s lawyers stated immediately after his arrest, the investigation believes that in 2012 the journalist was recruited by a representative of the Czech special service, to whom in 2017 he passed on classified information related to Russia’s military-technical cooperation in African countries and the actions of the Russian Armed Forces in the Middle East. The final recipient of the classified information, according to the investigation, was the United States.

Safronov does not admit guilt and believes that the criminal case is related to his journalistic activities. In turn, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that the persecution of Safronov was not related to his work in the media.

Before joining Roskosmos, Safronov was a correspondent for the newspapers Kommersant and Vedomosti, specializing, in particular, on the military-industrial complex and the space industry.

For almost a year, investigators do not allow Safronov to communicate with his mother, referring to the fact that she is a witness in his criminal case. In October 2020, investigator Alexander Chaban did not allow Safronov to call his mother on her birthday, arguing that the conversation “could be used by the accused for the covert exchange of information” or to carry out assignments of foreign special services that undermine the security of Russia. Later, the journalist was also not allowed to speak on the phone with his 12-year-old niece. Then he banned to correspond with relatives and lawyers.

The investigator persuaded Safronov to confess guilt in exchange for a call from his mother. Safronov refused the deal. “The investigator knows how important it is for Ivan to communicate with his mother, because before his arrest he called his mother 4-5 times every day. I don’t know anyone who would talk to their parents so often, ”said lawyer Dmitry Katchev.

Lawyer Ivan Pavlov, representing the interests of Ivan Safronov, was detained in April on charges of disclosing data from the preliminary investigation into the Safronov case. As a preventive measure, Pavlov was assigned a ban on certain actions: he cannot communicate with witnesses in his case, use the Internet and the telephone.

At the end of July, Ivan Safronov was interrogated as a witness in the Pavlov case, after which they lost the opportunity communicate with each other. Pavlov, however, remained Safronov’s representative.

In September Pavlov left from Russia, and at the end of October, Russian law enforcement agencies put him on the wanted list.