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Sochi shopkeeper pardoned over "military texts"

Sochi shopkeeper pardoned over "military texts"

Russia

A shopkeeper from Sochi who was convicted of treason last year has been pardoned and and freed from a Moscow prison.

Oksana Sevastidi, a 46-year old from the Black Sea resort, was sentenced to seven years in a penal colony for sending two text messages to a friend in Georgia in 2008. They refered to Russian military movements near the breakaway republic of Abkhazia.

She sent the texts to a man she barely knew just a few months before Russia and Georgia fought a brief war over Abkhazia and another breakaway region.
Then man has not been located since.

Sevastidi was pardoned by Russian President Vladimir Putin last week on humanitarian grounds.

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