Sochi shopkeeper pardoned over "military texts"

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.
View on Africanews
>