The trial of Frenchman Laurent Vinatier, a Swiss NGO employee arrested in Russia in early June, was set to begin on Tuesday, September 3 in Moscow. He is being tried in particular for failure to comply with the obligations relating to persons designated as “foreign agents.”
He faces up to 5 years in prison. The trial of Frenchman Laurent Vinatier, a collaborator of a Swiss NGO that mediates conflicts, opens this Tuesday, September 3 in Russia.
The 48-year-old employee of the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD) was arrested in early June in Moscow by Russian authorities while he was sitting on the terrace of a cafe. The images were widely broadcast in the media in the country led by Vladimir Putin. He has been in pre-trial detention since then.
Laurent Vinatier is accused of collecting intelligence on the Russian army and of not registering as a “foreign agent”. A last fact that he had admitted, explaining that he was unaware that a recent Russian law required him to do so and pleading good faith.
The Russia researcher will be tried by the Zamoskvoretsky court in Moscow for failing to comply with the obligations relating to persons designated as “foreign agents” and faces a five-year prison sentence. The “foreign agents” legislation is widely used by the Russian authorities to repress or monitor their critics.
More serious charges are feared for suspicions of gathering information on Russian military activities. If the charges are ever reclassified as “espionage”, the Frenchman risks much harsher sentences of up to 20 years in prison.
The Russian intelligence service, FSB, stated at the beginning of July that Laurent Vinatier had “fully admitted his guilt” during an interrogation.
“A bargaining chip when the time comes”
In recent years, several Westerners, particularly Americans, have been arrested in Russia and faced serious charges. The arrest of the Frenchman came at a time of rising tensions between Paris and Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine.
The timing is also questionable according to Jérôme Poirot, intelligence consultant for BFMTV. “At the beginning of June, a Russian agent was arrested in a hotel room at Roissy. He was making explosives and so we can assume that he was working for the Kremlin,” he recalls.
The Kremlin “immediately took a hostage the next day, our colleague Laurent Vinatier, to use him as a bargaining chip when the time came,” believes Jérôme Poirot.
On August 1, the West and Russia carried out the largest prisoner exchange since the end of the Cold War, including American journalist Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan, who were freed by Moscow.
The deal allowed for the release of 16 people held in Russia and Belarus in exchange for eight Russians imprisoned in the United States, Germany, Poland, Slovenia and Norway.
Paris then called on Moscow to immediately release the other people still “arbitrarily detained in Russia”, including Laurent Vinatier. An appeal that went unheeded.
Juliette Brossault with AFP
