March 2008 Archives

U.S. Department of State 2007 Report on Human Rights lists Igor Sutyagin and Valentin Danilov among Russia's political prisoners:

Political Prisoners and Detainees

Human rights organizations and activists have identified various individuals as political prisoners: Zara Murtazaliyeva, Valentin Danilov, Igor Sutyagin, Mikhail Khodorkovskiy, Platon Lebedev, and Svetlana Bakhmina. All remained imprisoned at the end of the year. Mikhail Trepashkin, previously identified by some observers as a political prisoner, was released this year.

[...]

Valentin Danilov was serving a 13-year sentence for allegedly transferring classified technology to China. Colleagues and supporters asserted that the information in question was declassified over a decade ago, leading some human rights organizations to consider Danilov's case to be politically motivated. In 2004 the Supreme Court overturned a 2003 jury acquittal, and Danilov was retried by a judge and convicted. Danilov has appealed to the ECHR, and in January 2006 Danilov's defense appealed the verdict to the Presidium of the Supreme Court. Neither court had responded to the appeals by the end of this year. Danilov also applied for a pardon, but on June 7, the Presidential Pardon Commission declined to pardon Danilov because he had not admitted his guilt.

Igor Sutyagin, a disarmament researcher with the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was convicted in 2004 on espionage-related charges and was serving a 15-year sentence in a maximum security prison for allegedly passing classified information about Russia's nuclear weapons to a London‑based firm. Sutyagin and human rights groups claimed that he had no access to classified information, and that the government sought a severe sentence to discourage others from sharing sensitive information with other countries. Amnesty International has deemed Sutyagin a political prisoner, and other domestic and international human rights groups raised concerns that the charges were politically motivated and that there were problems in the conduct of the trial and the lengthy sentence. In 2005 Sutyagin was transferred to a colony in Arkhangelsk Oblast, which was further from his family than his previous detention place in Udmurtiya. Sutyagin appealed to the Supreme Court and the ECHR in 2006; the appeals were pending at the end of the year. On April 19, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed a resolution urging Russia to release Sutyagin. In June the Presidential Pardon Commission declined to pardon Sutyagin because he had not admitted guilt.

[...]

Academic Freedom and Cultural Events

The government did not restrict academic freedom; however, human rights and academic organizations questioned whether the convictions of Igor Sutyagin, Valentin Danilov, and others inhibited academic freedom and contact with foreigners on subjects that the authorities might deem sensitive.

In May prosecutors in Novosibirsk dropped their case against rocket scientist Oleg Korobeinichev, who had been accused of disclosing state secrets for participating in a foreign research grant program. In July the deputy head of the Prosecutor's Office publicly apologized to Korobeinichev for any damage that may have been caused by falsely accusing him.

See also the 2006 Report