MOSCOW, March 3 (RAPSI, Yevgeniya Sokolova) – The Supreme Court of Russia has upheld the sentence for ex-employee of the notorious Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention center, Pavel Petran, who was found guilty of disclosure of state secrets, RAPSI learnt from the court’s press-service on Friday.

On Monday, Petran was sentenced to 1.5 years in prison by the Moscow City Court.

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).