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Moscow (AFP)

Russia on Tuesday handed long jail terms to a high-ranking security official and a cybersecurity expert after finding them guilty of treason, local news agencies reported.

A Moscow military tribunal imposed a sentence of 22 years in a harsh-regime penal colony on Sergei Mikhailov, who at the time of his arrest was the deputy head of the FSB security service's centre for information security.

In addition, the tribunal handed a 14-year jail sentence to Ruslan Stoyanov, an anti-hacking expert who was detained while working for Moscow-based cybersecurity giant Kaspersky.

The sentences came after a closed trial while the details of the criminal case against the men were classified.

A source familiar with the case told Interfax news agency that the pair had passed information to US security agencies, including the CIA.

At the time of their arrest in February 2017, a lawyer involved in the case confirmed to AFP that the charges against the pair were "connected to the United States."

It is one of the highest-profile treason cases to hit Russia's security community in years.

The US in 2017 imposed a ban on the use of Kaspersky's anti-virus software by federal agencies amid concerns about the company's links to Russian intelligence services.

© 2019 AFP