Russian policeman gets 15-year sentence for spying for the US. - Polidicks

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/62LoJui.jpg[/IMG] [QUOTE]A Russian police officer was convicted Thursday on charges of spying for the United States — using a cache disguised as a rock — and sentenced to 15 years in prison. It was the latest in a host of spy cases amid rising Russia-West tensions over Ukraine. The Moscow City Court on Thursday found Roman Ushakov guilty of treason for handing over classified information to the United States. Prosecutors produced his messages, which contained sensitive information about the Interior Ministry, as well as a rock-like cache with cash and a letter from the CIA, according to the Interfax news agency. Interfax quoted prosecutor Viktor Antipov as saying Ushakov was caught red-handed, pleaded guilty and gave detailed testimony about his contacts with U.S. intelligence. Antipov said Ushakov worked in Siberia, but gave no further details. The court said Ushakov was arrested in 2013 while trying to open the cache, which contained $37,000 for his information and a letter from the CIA with further instructions. It's not the first time a rock-like cache has emerged in a spy case. In 2006, Russia accused four British diplomats of espionage, saying they received secret information from a radio transmitter hidden in a rock.[/QUOTE] [URL="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/352f88fad7b54a4a8d4a804ee82da842/russian-policeman-gets-15-year-sentence-spying-us"]Source[/URL].

15 years for spying with very solid and concrete evidence? Why do I feel like he would get more in the USA? I mean, Manning got 35 for leaking info to whistleblowers, this guy got 15 for directly passing info straight to another country's intelligence agency.

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;47265705]15 years for spying with very solid and concrete evidence? Why do I feel like he would get more in the USA? I mean, Manning got 35 for leaking info to whistleblowers, this guy got 15 for directly passing info straight to another country's intelligence agency.[/QUOTE] Well, this guy pleaded guilty and didn't flee the country.

that rock is a spy! bad jokes aside, I was expecting someone to get more than 15 years. He was essentially a spy conducting illegal activity I guess this means we have to... leave no rock unturned

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;47265705]I mean, Manning got 35 for leaking info to whistleblowers, this guy got 15 for directly passing info straight to another country's intelligence agency.[/QUOTE] Leaking info to the press is de facto passing info straight to every other countries' intelligence agencies, the only caveat being that everyone knows it's been leaked, I don't know why people talk about it like it's less damaging. Not to mention I doubt 'sensitive information about the Interior Ministry' is as damaging as hundreds of thousands of documents on everything from political dispositions to troop deployments. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon_Scranage]Sharon Scranage[/url] was a CIA officer who passed documents to foreign countries, leading to the [url=http://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/13/us/officials-think-spying-led-to-death-of-cia-informant-in-ghana.html]death of an informant[/url] and was sentenced to five years in prison, later reduced to just two years. Believe it or not the US is not especially draconian in its treatment of spies, but the magnitude of punishment tends to match the magnitude of the crime.

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;47265705]15 years for spying with very solid and concrete evidence? Why do I feel like he would get more in the USA? I mean, Manning got 35 for leaking info to whistleblowers, this guy got 15 for directly passing info straight to another country's intelligence agency.[/QUOTE] It's important to note that the court decided Manning would be eligible for parole after serving 1/3rd of her sentence, with 4 years considered already served for the time she spent in detainment waiting for her trial. This means she's eligible for parole in 8 years. When you consider that she was charged with 21 crimes and had leaked roughly a million classified documents, 8 years of prison isn't that bad. There's also still the possibility of a presidential pardon for Manning in 2016, who knows.

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;47265705]15 years for spying with very solid and concrete evidence? Why do I feel like he would get more in the USA? I mean, Manning got 35 for leaking info to whistleblowers, this guy got 15 for directly passing info straight to another country's intelligence agency.[/QUOTE] Umm we deported the last ring of Russian spies Who even knows what happens to most spies, most of them probably get flipped or handled internally rather than making a show trial

They watch too much Russian TV shows. 52:30 [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1PjTbYEq7g[/media]