Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine on Monday (September 19th) sentenced an employee of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to 13 years in prison on charges of "
high treason
", Russian agencies reported. .
“
The judges find Dmitry Chabanov guilty (…) and sentence him to serve a 13-year prison sentence
,” said the Supreme Court of the separatist region of Lugansk, quoted by the Ria-Novosti agency.
Imprisoned since April, Dmitri Chabanov was accused by the pro-Russian authorities of having provided "
confidential information
" to foreign intelligence services, including the American CIA.
According to the separatist authorities, Dmitry Shabanov committed these acts of "
high treason
" between August 2021 and April 2022 when he worked as an OSCE security assistant at the forward patrol base in Stakhanavoskaya.
In April, the Lugansk State Security Ministry said it had arrested Dmitry Shabanov and another OSCE employee in the region, Mikhail Petrov.
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Last week, the OSCE “
unequivocally
” condemned the charges against these two employees, denouncing
“
totally unacceptable
so-called
'
legal proceedings
' ”.
"
They are unjustifiably detained on the basis of trumped up charges
," the organization denounced in a statement, calling for their immediate release.
The local OSCE mission, deployed in the conflict zone since 2014 to try to reduce tensions, had left the two separatist regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in the wake of the launch of the Russian offensive in Ukraine last February.
