Moments before the journalist Ivan Safronov was told he would be facing 24 years in prison, a Russian prosecutor offered him a deal.
Sign a confession, she said during a final courtroom break, and she would recommend a 12-year sentence instead. Safronov answered immediately.
“He told her to get lost,”said Evgeny Smirnov, his lawyer, in an interview. “He told her that fairly harshly.”
A Russian judge is expected to deliver a verdict on Monday in one of the most significant prosecutions against a Russian journalist in decades.
Safronov, a former military correspondent for Kommersant and Vedomosti, is facing a “record” sentence on treason charges that have been prosecuted with secret evidence behind closed doors.
That secret evidence, revealed by the Proekt media outlet in an extraordinary leak during the trial, showed that the government barely had a case against Safronov, colleagues said.
“I think it’s incredibly important that this showed that Vanya was imprisoned for his journalism,” said Taisia Bekbulatova, a friend and colleague of Safronov’s who is the head editor of Holod, an independent media site. She called the 24-year sentence requested by prosecutors “nearly a life sentence”.
Russian journalist facing 24-year jail term for treason refuses to sign ‘confession’
Ivan Safronov could be handed record sentence after being tried on secret evidence behind closed doors
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“Vanya’s case isn’t just about him and his family,” said Smirnov by telephone from Georgia, where he fled due to legal risks tied to the case. “The government has shown that for good, legal journalism work, you can go to prison for a long time. And it will have an enormous chilling effect.”
Safronov comes from a family of investigative journalists. His father, also Ivan, was a military correspondent for Kommersant who mysteriously died in a fall from the window of the family’s apartment in 2007. Russian media have reported he was working on a similar story about the shipment of Su-30 fighters and S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. The article was eventually scrapped.
Safronov, a dedicated journalist, followed in his father’s footsteps at the same newspaper. Bekbulatova called him the “brightest, best-informed, and bravest” reporter in terms of the Russian defence industry.
His lawyers described him as defiant in prison even after the prosecutor announced it would seek 24 years in prison for Safronov, a “record” in these types of treason cases, according to Smirnov, that was a “last attempt to force him to confess”.
“His mood hasn’t changed at all,” said Smirnov. “He still believes completely in his innocence and this [potential] prison term has not broken him at all.”
One lawyer from Safronov’s team has been jailed during the case. Smirnov was also forced to flee the country, he said, after it was revealed that he was under investigation by the FSB security service.
Before he left, Smirnov said, he visited Safronov one last time in prison. “We hugged, we said goodbye, and we said we’ll see each other again as free people,” he said.