MOSCOW, Jan 8 (Reuters) – A Russian basketball player who was arrested in France last year and threatened with extradition to the United States has been released and flown back to Moscow, his lawyer was quoted as saying on Thursday.
Daniil Kasatkin was detained at a Paris airport on June 21 at the request of the U.S., which suspected him of being part of a hacking network using ransomware against U.S. companies and federal institutions. He denied the accusation.
Russian state news agency RIA quoted his lawyer, Frederic Belot, as saying Kasatkin had been released late on Wednesday and was already back in Moscow. Belot has previously said that Kasatkin had no computer expertise and that his device had been hacked by cybercriminals.
Kasatkin’s release came two weeks after the Kremlin said Russia was in contact with France over the case of Laurent Vinatier, a French researcher who was sentenced in 2024 to three years in a Russian prison for violating the country’s “foreign agent” laws.
A French journalist raised Vinatier’s case with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a press conference last month, and Putin said he would look into it.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later said that Moscow had made an unspecified “offer” to Paris, and the ball was in France’s court.
(Reporting by Reuters, writing by Mark TrevelyanEditing by Gareth Jones)
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