Russian man jailed for burning Koran charged with treason

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian man jailed in February for burning the Koran has been charged with treason by prosecutors who accuse him of passing video footage of military movements to Ukraine.

In a statement, Russia’s prosecutor general’s office said that 20-year-old Nikita Zhuravel was accused of sending footage of a freight train carrying warplanes, and information about the movements of a car linked to a Russian military base to a representative of Ukrainian intelligence.

It said Zhuravel had volunteered himself to send the Ukrainian intelligence officer the data.

Reuters was not immediately able to identify a lawyer representing Zhuravel in the treason case.

Zhuravel is serving a three-and-a-half-year sentence after being convicted under Russia’s law against offending religious believers, for publicly burning a Koran in his home city of Volgograd.

His case drew international attention last year when Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov published a video in which his son Adam was shown beating and kicking the defendant while he was in prison awaiting trial.

Russian investigators had earlier transferred his case to Chechnya. The Investigative Committee, which handles serious crimes, said this was because they received many messages from residents of the heavily Muslim region asking to be designated injured parties.

(Writing by Felix Light; Editing by Alex Richardson)