A Russian court has convicted a reserve colonel of spying on behalf of the United States and sentenced him to 12 years in prison, the country’s intelligence agency said Thursday.
Vladimir Lazar would be sent to a high-security prison and stripped of his military rank, the Federal Security Service said in a statement.
Prosecutors alleged that Lazar purchased a disk with more than 7,000 images of classified topographical maps of Russia from a collector in 2008 and smuggled it to neighboring Belarus where he gave it to an American agent.
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31 May 2012
The Associated Press