MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian investigators said on Thursday they had detained a French citizen on suspicion of gathering information about the activities of the Russian military.
The Investigative Committee, which handles serious crimes, said a criminal case had been opened against the Frenchman, whom it did not name, for violating a Russian law on “foreign agents”.
It said he had violated a section of the statute punishing those who fail to register themselves as “foreign agents” and are involved in the “targeted collection of information in the field of military (and) military-technical activities of the Russian Federation”.
“Such information, if obtained by foreign sources, may be used against the security of the state,” the Investigative Committee said.
It added that the man had repeatedly visited Russia for several years and held meetings with Russian citizens.
The charges carry a punishment of up to five years in prison. No comment was immediately available from the French Foreign Ministry in Paris.
A short video clip released by the Investigative Committee showed a man in jeans and a black shirt being detained in a restaurant by security officials with masks over their faces, escorted into a van and then being walked into a building. The suspect’s face was blurred out.
Reuters was able to identify the restaurant shown in the clip as a cafe called Akademia in central Moscow.
(Reporting by Lucy Papachristou and Filipp Lebedev; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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