Russia sentences physicist to 12 years imprisonment on treason charges
The Moscow City Court sentenced Anatoly Gubanov, a 66-year-old physicist who worked on hypersonic development, to 12 years imprisonment on treason charges, the Russian independent news site Mediazona reported on Oct. 27.
Gubanov is the former head of the aircraft and rockets department at the Central Aerodynamics and Hydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI) in Zhukovsky, Moscow Oblast.
He was arrested in 2020 on suspicions that he was providing secret hypersonic development documents to his Dutch colleagues, with whom he collaborated in a civil hypersonic airliner project, HEXAFLY-INT.
Gubanov pleaded guilty, asking judges to take into account all mitigating circumstances and issue a sentence below the minimum threshold of 12 years, which the court rejected.
The physicist's Russian colleague in the project, 70-year-old Valery Golubkin, was detained in 2021 and also sentenced to 12 years imprisonment this year in June. Golubkin rejected the charges raised against him.
Human rights organization Perviy Otdel said that the materials passed by Gubanov and Golubkin to their Dutch colleagues had been examined by three specialized commissions prior to the submission. The reviews discovered no classified content in the documents, the group said.
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