The criminal case against Anatoly Maslov, 76, will open in St Petersburg’s city court on June 1, the court said on its website.

He and two colleagues at the same Siberian institute, the Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ITAM), have all been arrested on suspicion of treason in the past year.

All three are specialists in hypersonics - a field of key importance to the development of Russia’s next generation of missiles, capable of flying at 10 times the speed of sound.

The case is marked as “top secret” and will be closed to the media and public, the court said. It said Maslov’s custody was extended until November 10 in a closed hearing on Wednesday.

Maslov was detained last June in Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia and one of Russia’s main science hubs. Soon afterwards he was sent to Lefortovo prison in Moscow, a former KGB interrogation site.

In St Petersburg, he has been placed in the FSB security service jail on Shalernaya Street where many Soviet dissidents were once held by the KGB, Maslov’s lawyer Olga Dinze told Reuters.

She declined to comment on the case, saying that “the situation is extremely difficult.”

Details of the accusations against the three men are classified, but the news portal of the science city where they are based said Maslov was suspected of handing secrets to China.

Source: Al Arabiya