Russian justice on Monday sentenced Frenchman Laurent Vinatier to three years in prison. This employee of a Swiss NGO, detained since June, was accused of not having registered as a “foreign agent”. His lawyers have announced their intention to appeal.
The court decided to “declare Mr. Vinatier guilty” and “sentence him to a prison term of three years”, announced judge Natalia Tcheprassova at the end of the trial.
This researcher specializing in the post-Soviet space was employed on Russian soil by the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Swiss NGO which mediates in conflicts outside official diplomatic circuits.
“My wife is Russian, my friends are Russian. I lived a Russian life,” he recalled Monday to the judges, saying he fell in love with Russia 20 years ago, during a trip. The Frenchman appeared stoic when the verdict was announced. He was not allowed to speak after this sentence to the press present in court.
Call for a “harsh verdict”
Laurent Vinatier’s Russian lawyers, Oleg Bessonov and Alexeï Sinitsine, immediately deplored a “harsh verdict” to journalists. “We will, of course, appeal,” they announced.
The Russian authorities accused the Frenchman of having failed to fulfill his obligation to register under the label of “foreign agent” even though he was collecting “information in the field of military activities” which could be “used against security” of Russia.
He risked up to five years in prison, but the prosecutor had requested earlier Monday a sentence of three years and three months in prison. Laurent Vinatier’s lawyers had asked that their client, who had “fully confessed his guilt”, they recalled, be punished with a simple fine, describing the prosecutor’s request as “unreasonable and illegal”.
In the accused box, his face drawn, Laurent Vinatier had called for a “lenient and fair judgment”, believing that “imprisonment will affect[it] the living conditions” of his family.
A “collection of sensitive information”
Laurent Vinatier, 48, admitted not having registered as a “foreign agent”, a label used in Russia against critical voices and which imposes heavy administrative obligations, under penalty of criminal sanctions. He claimed to be unaware that this obligation had been introduced into the penal code.
The Russian security services (FSB) for their part affirmed at the beginning of July that the accused had “collected”, as part of his professional exchanges, “military and technical information which can be used by intelligence services foreign to the “against the security of Russia”, declared the FSB at the time.
These accusations against him had, for a certain period, led to fears of a more serious indictment, for example for “espionage”, a crime punishable by 20 years of deprivation of liberty in Russia. At the beginning of September, the Frenchman’s pre-trial detention was extended by six months on the first day of his trial, until February 21, 2025.
>> Read: The pre-trial detention in Russia of Frenchman Laurent Vinatier extended until February 21
According to sources interviewed by AFP, the Frenchman had been working for years on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, even before the Russian offensive of February 2022, as part of discreet diplomatic efforts in parallel with those of the States. Until his arrest, he made trips to both countries.
ats/again
