Russian Col convicted of spying for US

MOSCOW - The Associated Press

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 yesterday.

 Vladimir Lazar would be sent to a high-security prison and stripped of his military rank, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a statement. Prosecutors alleged 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.

The agency said the maps could be used for planning military operations against Russia. The FSB did not disclose any personal information or circumstances of Lazar. The FSB did not specify when the court’s verdict and sentence were handed down. In a separate case, a Russian defense company worker was convicted May 18 of passing missile secrets to foreign intelligence. The Sverdlov Regional Court in the city of Yekaterinburg handed an eight-year prison sentence to Alexander Gniteyev, a worker at a defense company dealing with automatic systems.

Officials said Gniteyev had divulged missile secrets to foreign intelligence, but wouldn’t say what country Gniteyev was spying for.