The photographer from Perm, who was sentenced to 16 years on charges of treason, has been transferred from the pre-trial detention centre.

The photographer Grigory Skvortsov, who was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security penal colony, has been transferred from Pre-trial Detention Centre No. 4 in Kudymkar to an unknown location. This was reported by his support group’s Telegram channel.

Skvortsov’s allies pointed out that his appeal against the verdict is scheduled for 12 September in Nizhny Novgorod, a major city on the Volga River. He may also have been taken to Perm, a large city in the Urals.

On 26 June, the Perm Regional Court found Skvortsov guilty under the article on high treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code) and sentenced him to 16 years’ imprisonment. According to the investigators, the photographer allegedly handed an American journalist a book called “Soviet ‘Secret Bunkers’: Urban Special Fortification 1930–1960s” by the historian Dmitry Yurkov. The book is based on declassified information about Soviet fortification facilities.

As Skvortsov himself said in a letter, he shared diagrams found online containing information about the locations of special sites, which had been freely available for decades “with the connivance of the FSB and GUSP.” He noted that these materials still remain in free access online.

He also purchased from Yurkov, author of the work on bunkers, photographs of declassified archival documents included in additional materials for the book. These were advertised by Yurkov’s friends in their blogs and in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a Russian national newspaper.

Ultimately, Skvortsov gave the journalist both the photos he bought from Yurkov and the diagrams he found online. He said he had wanted to share this information publicly, but when he learned that law enforcement were interested in him, he asked the journalist not to publish the material.

“The investigator ignored my statement that I did not use the book but only its supplementary materials. Nevertheless, he sent the book for examination, not the electronic document,” the photographer said. He also pointed out that, according to the investigator, Skvortsov himself created the “electronic diagram,” rather than finding an existing one that showed the locations of special facilities.

The photographer recounted that after his arrest, security officials beat him, forced him to say on camera to whom he had sent the data, and even “suggested” the journalist’s name. Skvortsov said the passwords to his devices were beaten out of him.