Three people convicted of spying for Russia in Poland avoid prison – Polish media outlet
Three members of a network exposed by Polish intelligence services that had been collecting information and was supposed to arrange sabotage operations on the instructions of Russian intelligence have still not started to serve their sentences despite having been given prison terms.
Source: European Pravda citing the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita
Details: When the sentences for the three defendants accused of being members of the Russian spy network were handed down, the court revoked the pre-trial restriction (custody). Rzeczpospolita has discovered that the defendants’ names are Artur M., Yaroslav B. and Maria M.
Yaroslav B., a 44-year-old Ukrainian national, has fallen off the Polish services’ radar: the court issued a warrant for his compulsory detention back in January, and again in April and May, but he has still not begun to serve his sentence.
Artur M., who was 16 at the time of his detention, was supposed to serve his sentence in a young offenders institution, while Maria M., a 20-year-old Belarusian woman, applied for parole, but failed to appear at the Warsaw court that was to have made the decision.
Jacek Dobrzyński, a spokesperson for Poland's Minister-Coordinator of Special Services, told Rzeczpospolita that 12 of the 14 offenders are serving their sentences in prison, and another is due to be brought in next week.
"One person from the spy network is indeed at large and is on the wanted list," he added, without specifying who it was.
In November 2023, 16 defendants were accused of espionage, including conspiring to blow up trains carrying humanitarian aid to Ukraine and conducting reconnaissance of military and critical infrastructure facilities.
In December, a court in Lublin, Poland, found 14 citizens of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine guilty of conspiring to carry out sabotage operations for Moscow as a part of a spy network and sentenced them to various prison terms.
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