MOSCOW. Feb 9 (Interfax) - A former employee of the Moscow Patriarchate, Yevgeny Petrin, accused of treason for working with the United States, has denied his guilt, his lawyer said.
"He denies his guilt, many testimonies were given under coercion," his lawyer Andrei Stebenev told Interfax.
He confirmed that his client had been formally charged with treason. "They have long been working on this case," Stebenev
Earlier on Monday, Moscow's Lefortovo District Court spokeswoman Yuliya Skotnikova told Interfax that the court extended Petrin's custody term until April. "His custody has now been extended to a ten-month term, the suspect being charged with treason," Skotnikova said.
Petrin's remand into custody was requested by investigators from the Federal Security Service (FSB), the case is classified, she added.
For its part, the Moscow Patriarchate could not give details in relation to the Petrin case. "We do not know the details relating to this case," a Patriarchate source told Interfax on Monday.
Contrary to media reports, Petrin is not a priest, but worked for the Synodal Department of External Church Relations a while ago, the source said.
Last week four treason and espionage cases were reported.
In early February, Lefortovo Court extended custody terms for the Russian man Gennady Kravtsov charged with treason, and for the former director of Znamya, a Ukrainian defense company, who is suspected of espionage.
Also, there was a high-profile case against Svetlana Davydova, a mother of seven from the Smolensk region, who was initially remanded into custody but released on travel restrictions on February 3.
In addition, it emerged on February 4, that a former researcher from the Russian Federal Nuclear Center in the Nizhny Novgorod region, Vladimir Golubev, had been charged with divulging state secrets.