MOSCOW, January 26 (RAPSI) – Moscow’s Lefortovsky District Court ordered pre-trial detention until May 1 of Aleksey Sinyakov who stands accused of treason, the court spokesperson Yulia Skotnikova told RAPSI on Tuesday.

Skotnikova declined to comment on the case as the pre-trial hearings are held behind closed doors. 

A number of treason cases were opened in the last few years in Russia.

Gennady Kravtsov, a former employee of Russia’s military intelligence services, was convicted of treason after it was revealed that he sent a job application letter to a Swedish defense company in 2010. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison last September.

Maxim Lyudomirsky, a head engineer at a defence contractor developing artillery systems, received a 9-year jail sentence on treason charges last November. 

At the same time, treason charges were abruptly dropped last March against Svetlana Davydova, a mother of seven from western Russia. A criminal case was opened against Davydova after she called the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow and claimed that Russian soldiers might be heading to eastern Ukraine.