Former law enforcement officer sentenced to seven years in penal colony for private phone conversations, qualified as ‘public’ since phone line was tapped

A Moscow court sentenced Semiel Vedel, a former captain of the Interior Ministry’s Internal Service, to seven years in prison for “spreading fakes” about the Russian military, Mediazona reports.

The prosecution had sought a nine-year sentence for Vedel, charged with disseminating false information about Russia’s combat operations. The case was based on three private phone conversations in which the defendant expressed personal opinions that contradicted Russia’s official position on the war in Ukraine. Because Vedel’s phone line had been tapped, the prosecution deemed those conversations “public.”

Vedel came under surveillance in connection with a 20-year-old murder case in which three law-enforcement operatives had been the victims. According to the declassified case materials, the detectives believed that Vedel might have had information about the triple murder.

Vedel was taken into custody on March 18, 2022, becoming the first criminal defendant under Russia’s new law against “military fakes.” Although he had filed for a legal name change in 2005, case materials referred to him by his old name, Sergey Klokov.