Russian agent arrested for spying released from Florida prison
Saturday, 26 October 2019 (11:52 IST)
Maria Butina was arrested in July 2018 on allegations she was engaging in Russian espionage. In December she entered a plea bargain on a charge that she acted as an unregistered foreign agent.
Convicted Russian agent Maria Butina was released from a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida, on Friday.
The Russian gun activist confessed in December last year to conspiring to act as an unregistered agent in a plea deal that saw her sentenced to 18 months jail. Butina had been behind bars since her arrest in July, but is now free to leave, having served almost all of her jail term. A change in federal law brought forward her release date based on credit for good behavior.
Butina admitted that she had worked with a former Russian lawmaker to leverage contacts in the National Rifle Association (NRA) and gather intelligence on conservative US activists and Republicans.
Failure to inform officials
The Siberia native contravened US law as she did not report those actions to the Justice Department, which insists on the registration of lobbyists and others who do the bidding of foreign governments.
The 31-year-old is expected to be immediately deported to her home country.
Earlier this year, Butina said she was not a spy and that her actions took place out in the open. Her lawyers said she was simply a student interested in American politics and a closer US-Russian alliance.
The Russian government has repeatedly denied that Butina was acting on the orders of its security services.
From prison, she told US broadcaster NPR that she had only sought to be involved in "civil diplomacy," before adding, "I never hide my love to my motherland neither to this country... I love both countries, and I was building peace."
However, at the time of her sentencing, US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan said that the jail term was intended to act as a deterrent to others who might consider spying and that her actions were "no simple misunderstanding by an overeager foreign student."
