Media: October 2005 Archives

In Khodorkovsky's Prison Kept a Secret

The Moscow Times, Wednesday, October 12, 2005. Issue 3272. Page 1.

By Nabi Abdullaev

[...]

Igor Sutyagin, a former scholar at Moscow's respected USA and Canada Institute who is serving a 15-year prison sentence for espionage, has been told he will be transferred from a high-security prison camp in the Udmurtia region to a prison in the Moscow region, his lawyer Anna Stavitskaya said Tuesday.

"He has gotten accustomed to the environment in the Udmurtia prison, he even produced a newsletter there. I don't know why he has to be transferred now," she said. "Also, the transfer is something extremely fearful."

Stavitskaya said the decision to move Sutyagin could have resulted from the Sept. 20-22 visit to Moscow by Christos Pourgourides, a rapporteur for the Council of Europe. Pourgourides had asked Russian officials why Sutyagin was sent to serve his sentence in Udmurtia and not in the Moscow region, where he was sentenced, or in the Kaluga region, where he lived, Stavitskaya said.