MOSCOW, February 27 (RAPSI, Lyudmila Klenko) – The Moscow City Court has sentenced former employee of the notorious Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention center, Pavel Petran, to 1.5 years in penal colony for disclosure of state secrets, RAPSI learnt from the court’s press-service on Monday.

A criminal case against Petran was marked as containing classified information. The court found out that Petran was an operative of the detention center at the moment of committing a crime.

Petran was originally a defendant in an extortion case, along with the ex-head of the detention center’s operative department, Mikhail Zakharov, and acting officer of the insulator Valentin Bazayev, ex-employee of the insulator Anatoly Osmachko, a doctor at a Moscow clinic Fatima Nayfonova as well as two other ex-employees Anton Devyatayev and Yeldar Vekua.

According to investigators, Zakharov, along with other members of the detention center, conspired with a criminal mastermind in custody planning to extort money from detainees suspected of economic crimes. Defendants threatened to create unbearable living conditions and to use force against detainees if those were to refuse transfer of funds, amounting to 10 million rubles ($175,400).