Scientist’s Sentence for Espionage Condemned by Liberals
The social committee 2008: Free Choice made an announcement on Friday condemning the sentence passed on Russian scientist Igor Sutyagin who was jailed for 15 years for espionage.
In the text of the announcement received by MosNews the sentence is called “unjust and biased”.
The committee declared that it was not proven that Sutyagin had passed on information containing state secrets, nor that foreigners who had received this information had been connected with intelligence services. “Furthermore, the court knew that Sutyagin had no access to any classified materials, had not used any sources of secret information, so that it was the matter only of analyzing open sources,” the committee’s statement said.
It concludes that “Sutyagin was convicted only for having shared his views, his point of view on some ’sensible’ topics connected with the development of the armed forces and the defense complex of the country, with some foreigners”.
The committee explains that the Russian authorities were so “assertive” in their efforts to convict Sutyagin because “five years ago when the FSB (Federal Security Service) brought the charge against the scientist, this agency was led by none other than (current president) Vladimir Putin”.
It is stressed in the statement that the most “deplorable” fact is that Sutyagin was found guilty by a jury. Russian society “pin its hopes of the revival of a really civilized justice system with the introduction” of courts of jury, the committee said in the statement. But Sutyagin’s case has shown that “the appearance of a bench with twelve jurors in the courtroom is not enough to consider the judicial reform as successfully finished”.
The committee declared that the court of jury had turned out to be a new instrument of the arbitrariness of the state.
“From now on, any researcher, expert or journalist can be convicted for having brought into the world conclusions made on the basis of open information but that seemed ’secret’ to the authorities. And if so, from now on, any critical article analyzing the situation in the army and military industrial complex can be declared a disclosure of a state secret, and its author can be persecuted. And even more so, from now on, any ’unapproved contact’ with a citizen of a foreign state can be at will compared to high treason even if no one manages to prove that during that intercourse a malevolent foreigner succeeded to worm something really secret,” the statement said.
The committee declared that the unjust verdict against Sutyagin was “evidence of a direct offensive by the authorities against the very foundation of a democratic constitutional system in Russia”.
The co-chairmen of the committee are the world chess champion Garry Kasparov, former co-leader of the liberal Union of Right Forces Boris Nemtsov and journalist Sergei Parkhomenko.
Parkhomenko told MosNews that their statements would appear in any case of an unjust sentence, even if it was not based on a jury verdict. But he said that the court of jury is a “progressive technology” and it was supposed that its introduction would entail other changes in the judicial system, such as the establishment of a mechanism of jurors’ selection.
Sutyagin’s lawyer had earlier told MosNews that he had suspicions there were officers of the security services among the new jurors.
“The authorities are not ready to force the changes, but are satisfied with the current situation,” Parkhomenko said.
