Georgia arrests suspected Russian spies

The North Caucasus District Military Court on Wednesday found a Russian serviceman and his mother guilty of spying for Georgia. Sr. Lt. David Aliyev and his mother Irina Aliyeva were sentenced to ten and eight years in a high security prison, respectively. Lt. Gen. Vladimir Milovanov, the military prosecutor of the Southern Military District, said the verdict was just. “I believe that the court has passed a legitimate, well substantiated and just verdict with regard to the spies,” Milovanov said, adding that the convicts had been gathering information that fell under the definition of official secrets. The suspected spies were arrested by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) in January. Aliyev, deployed to a military unit in Russia’s Southern Military District, was found to "have been collecting secret information on orders from Georgian intelligence services." His mother was involved in conveying the information to Georgia.