MOSCOW, April 5. /TASS/. Russia’s Embassy in Lithuania views a sentence to Lithuanian citizen Roman Sesel accused of spying for Russia as part of Vilnius’ course on whipping up spy hysteria, the diplomatic mission said in a comment on its website.
"We are not familiar with another "Russian spy" labeled so by Lithuania’s Prosecutor-General’s Office, Lithuanian citizen of Klaipeda Roman Sesel, who was sentenced to seven years in prison. At the same time, we cannot consider this criminal process separate from the course taken by the official Vilnius on whipping up spy hysteria, where Russia and its intelligence services are named as a major threat to national security," the embassy said.
The diplomatic mission was surprised that Lithuania’s judicial bodies "interpreted" local criminal legislation in a way making it possible to bring to responsibility for obtaining data from open sources and providing a broad opportunity to prosecute citizens on political motives.
On April 3, the Klaipeda district court sentenced Lithuanian citizen Roman Sesel to seven years in jail for allegedly spying for Russia. Sesel denied the accusations, stating that he had not fulfilled any tasks of foreign special services.
According to the case files, since 2015 until his detention in December 2017 Sesel had allegedly collected information on Latvia’s Navy and NATO military vessels entering Klaipeda and military vessels, and also on a liquefied natural gas terminal working at the port. The prosecutors said the suspect collected unclassified information but his steps may be considered as criminal since this had been done upon the order of foreign intelligence services.