“The Supreme Court has gone through the material. There has been no reason to issue a leave of appeal,” HD writes in the decision.
It was in May that the Svea Court of Appeal sentenced 42-year-old Peyman Kia to life imprisonment for aggravated espionage on behalf of Russia, and thus upheld the penalty decided in the district court.
According to the Court of Appeal, it has been proven that Peyman Kia, 42, procured, forwarded and disclosed to the Russian intelligence service GRU the absolute majority of the information covered by the indictment.
About 90 documents
According to the indictment, he acquired around 90 secret documents through his previous employment at Säpo and Must, and the Court of Appeal made the assessment that the largest part of them was passed on to Russia.
Peyman Kia has admitted espionage by twice selling intelligence to Russia. According to him himself, on one occasion it was about false information. However, the Court of Appeal did not buy that explanation.
– The evidence that the prosecutors presented in their original case is so strong that the information does not deserve to be taken into account, said the chairman of the court, Ragnar Palmkvist, after the verdict.
The Court of Appeal changed the district court’s judgment only by changing the criminal period for the serious crime of espionage to 15 October 2011 through February 2017. According to the district court’s judgment, the espionage continued until 2021.
Younger brother also convicted
Peyman Kia’s younger brother, 35-year-old Payam Kia, was sentenced in the district court to nine years and ten months in prison for aggravated espionage. He has admitted that he handed over envelopes at the Russian embassy and collected payment at a library in Uppsala.
Both brothers appealed to the Court of Appeal, but Payam Kia withdrew his appeal at the last minute, whereupon the district court judgment was upheld.