The Lithuanian Prosecutor General's Office has announced a case accusing two citizens of Lithuania of spying for Russia was brought to court.
This was reported by the Ukrainian-registered European Pravda news outlet, citing BNS.
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According to the prosecutor's office, the defendants do not know each other and their actions differ, but findings of the pretrial investigation suggest that they were involved in crimes committed against the Lithuanian state by an employee of the Border Directorate of the Russian Federation's FSB in Kaliningrad region.
The investigation established that he had used a fake identity. He speaks fluent Lithuanian.
Spokeswoman for the Lithuanian Prosecutor General's Office Elena Martinoniene said the case was the same pretrial investigation that the Office reported about in early March last year.
In the spring, it was reported that member of Klaipeda City Council Ela Andrejeva was detained. Her lawyer, Natalja Focenkova, later told BNS that the politician had been given special witness status.
Representative of the Klaipeda Regional Court Dovile Saulenienė said that the court had received the case. The defendants in the case are public figure, Director General of the Baltic Youth Association Juvenis Aleksejus Greičius and Mindaugas Tunikaitis.
Tunikaitis lives on the border with Russia's Kaliningrad region; in 2015, he ran for a local government council with the Lithuanian List political party. In 2015, Greičius ran with the Lithuanian Russian Union for Klaipeda City Council, and Andrejeva was also on this list.
Investigators say the suspects were supposed to take pictures of certain facilities, collect information about certain individuals, participate in events, buy and hand over certain publications, publish certain information publicly and perform other tasks.
They received cash rewards for the transferred data in the form of "support for health" or "compensation" for visa fees.
Both suspects were detained in early March last year. They are now in pretrial detention. They can be sentenced to three to fifteen years in prison for espionage.
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