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Washington Post
November 3, 2001
Spy Trials Challenge New Russia
Critics Fear Return To Obsession With Internal Security
By Sharon LaFraniere
Washington Post Foreign Service
MOSCOW, Nov. 2 -- Igor Sutyagin's wife says the white folders that crowd the unfinished wooden bookshelves in their two-room apartment hold nothing but thousands of newspaper articles on the Russian military that her husband has dutifully cut out since the mid-1980s.
Federal Security Service agents who raided the apartment in 1999, though, had a very different view. They claimed the folders contained proof of espionage, accusations that have kept Sutyagin in prison for the past two years.
On Thursday, as Sutyagin's trial drew to a close in Kaluga, a town about 100 miles south of Moscow, government prosecutors demanded he be convicted and imprisoned for 14 more years.
In a country that insists it is moving determinedly away from the arbitrariness of the Soviet years and toward the rule of law, Igor Sutyagin, 37, represents a conundrum. A researcher at the Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada, one of Moscow's best-known research organizations, he stands accused of spying, a charge that his colleagues, human rights activists and many Western observers believe to be bogus.
And he has company. Sutyagin is one of three Russians accused of espionage in what human rights activists describe as dubious cases. A physicist from the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk faces up to 20 years in prison; a career diplomat from Moscow, sentenced to four years in prison, is appealing his conviction.
Critics fear the trials presage a disturbing renewal of Russia's fixation with internal security. At least, they add to the growing nervousness among Russian intellectuals about whether President Vladimir Putin, in his drive to establish order after years of political, legal and economic chaos, is giving the country's security services too much freedom.
"These cases are the kind of thing that worry people a lot," said Robert Nurick, director of the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Center. "I sense a kind of self-censorship. It's not dramatic, but there is a sense that the limits of what is permissible are coming in again, and people are not sure how far. That has produced a kind of a caution."
The anxiety is tempered by some signs that the Kremlin wants to protect civil rights. Pushed by Putin, the Russian legislature is poised to adopt a new criminal code that grants defendants accused of serious crimes the right to jury trials. While prosecutors would retain much of their extensive powers, the code would require that search and arrest warrants be issued by judges.
Still, said Ernest Chyorny, a human rights activist, the proposed code is just a piece of paper, yet to be adopted and at least a year away from taking effect. "The reality is very far from all these codes," he said.
Chyorny is the Moscow representative of a human rights group founded by Alexander Nikitin, who fought treason charges for five years after he exposed the radiation hazards of Russia's nuclear submarines. The former navy captain was acquitted last year, as were two other recently accused spies. U.S. businessman Edmond Pope was convicted but pardoned by Putin.
Chyorny argues that espionage cases have picked up momentum under Putin, who formerly headed the Federal Security Service (FSB), a successor to the Soviet KGB, which also employed Putin. "What is important here is that FSB agents have started to feel freer," Chyorny said. "There is no proof in any of these cases. We are talking about complete arbitrariness. If the society does not react, it can snowball."
By Western standards, a Russian espionage trial is a highly mysterious affair. Proceedings are closed, prosecutors are notoriously tight-lipped and evidence is never made public. The only information about what takes place behind courtroom doors comes from defense attorneys and relatives of the accused.
Thursday, for instance, the Interfax news agency reported the prosecution's demand that Sutyagin serve 14 years in prison with this elaboration: "The prosecutor substantiated his demand by the materials of the case examined in court."
For Russian scholars and scientists, some of whom need work from foreign firms to feed their families, the secrecy makes it harder to figure out what is acceptable and what could land them in prison.
"There is just no clear regulation on what information is treated as a state secret," said Irina Manannikova, Sutyagin's wife and an unemployed mathematician. "I myself do not understand. The investigators told me that Igor did not have the right to take information from 10 different public sources and prepare a general review. This is incredible, but this is what is going on now."
Sutyagin's attorneys say he is accused of publishing classified information about Russia's nuclear weapons in a book and in reports to a London-based defense consulting firm, Alternative Futures, that hired him as a part-time consultant.
Anna Stavitskaya, one of Sutyagin's lawyers, said FSB experts testified that the firm had all the earmarks of a CIA front. Sutyagin can prove he drew all the information from public sources, she said, but that does not ensure his acquittal.
"I cannot imagine anything more absurd than this," she said. "This is a kind of warning to scholars, for them to think less. I think the FSB is anxious to show its work. They are unable to find real spies, so they create artificial ones."
Like Sutyagin, Valentin Danilov landed a freelance contract with a foreign company. A 53-year-old thermal physicist, he earned less than $52 a month as head of a department in a state research institute in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. His wife, Tamara, said a Chinese company hired him to analyze the effect of space particles on satellites.
She said that a local FSB official gave him verbal permission to do the work and that she asked him why he didn't try to get written permission. He answered that "the FSB is the kind of agency you do not want to deal with very often, she said."
During 10 months in prison, her husband's weight has dropped from 165 pounds to 121 pounds, she said. Interviewed in his cell, the 6-foot-tall scientist told one reporter bitterly: "I did scientific research for more than 30 years and no doubt contributed some useful work to my country. And my reward is an accusation of treason."
Danilov's case is being heard by a judge and two citizens who are supposed to have some say in the verdict. When one of the citizen jurors announced that Danilov's case should be thrown out, both were replaced at the prosecutor's insistence, Tamara Danilova said.
Another accused spy, Valentin Moiseev, also faced a changing courtroom cast. A career diplomat, Moiseev, 55, was accused of giving a South Korean diplomat secret information about Russia's arms deals.
After his conviction was overturned, three judges heard his case in turn. Each failed to appear on the day when the verdict was to be rendered, said Moiseev's wife, Natalya. Finally a fourth judge sentenced him to four years.
Chyorny, the human rights activist, said one of the documents that Moiseev allegedly handed over to the South Koreans was a draft agreement between Russia and North Korea on the protection of birds.
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