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US prosecutors ask for tighter security for Russia’s hacking suspect Seleznev

Seleznev was detained at the international airport of the Maldives’ capital Male on July 5 and taken to a jail on the island of Guam on cyber fraud charges

NEW YORK, October 3. /TASS/. US prosecutors seek tighter security for Russian hacking suspect Roman Seleznev after his lawyer allegedly provided him with a cellphone communication while visiting the suspect at a court cellblock.

Prosecutors claim that last month his lawyer Anna Goykhman held a cellular telephone against a screen that separated the lawyer with her client during the visit at the pre-trail detention ward and Seleznev allegedly spoke in Russian to someone over the telephone.

In an interview with TASS, Goykhman denied the allegations saying that she was not even the part of Seleznev’s team of lawyers on August 15, when the incident allegedly took place.

“I deny that I ever sneaked a telephone and that the client made any call to anywhere,” she said adding that such accusations were detrimental to her professional career of a lawyer.

Seleznev, 30, was detained at the international airport of the Maldives’ capital Male on July 5 and taken to a jail on the island of Guam on cyber fraud charges. Last month was relocated to Seattle in the state of Washington, where the charges against him were initially filed.

American investigators suspect Seleznev of having intended to steal, and then sell, information about the credit cards of US citizens between October 2009 and February 2011. In all, he is suspected of theft of some 200,000 credit card numbers of American people.

In March of 2011, a court in the State of Washington charged him in absentia on 29 counts, which jointly entail imprisonment for several dozen years and a fine of several million US dollars.

On August 1, US District Court of Guam Chief Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood ordered Seleznev’s transfer to the State of Washington claiming that the Russian should face his indictment there.

Moscow claims that Seleznev was not arrested but “kidnapped” by the US authorities and the case against him is politically motivated.

In mid-July the Russian Foreign Ministry presented a demarche to the US Embassy in Moscow in connection with the charges brought against Seleznev and another Russian citizen, Konstantin Yaroshenko, in the United States.

Russian pilot Yaroshenko was detained by the US authorities in Liberia in 2010 and then taken to the United States. In September 2011, a US court sentenced him to 20 years in prison for having been allegedly involved in a criminal ring organized for smuggling a large shipment of cocaine. Yaroshenko denied the accusations. Moscow believes that the pressed charges against him were politically motivated.