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Moscow Times
March 21, 2002
Top Court Refuses to Release Sutyagin
By Nabi Abdullaev
Staff Writer
The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected an appeal to release researcher Igor Sutyagin while he waits for the FSB to reinvestigate his spying case.
Sutyagin's lawyers said they would file a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights.
Igor Sutyagin, a researcher at the prestigious U.S.A. and Canada Institute, was charged with treason in October 1999 for allegedly divulging classified information about the readiness of Russian nuclear arms to British company Future Alternative. The company was closed shortly after Sutyagin's arrest.
Sutyagin and his colleagues at the institute say he had no access to secret documents and obtained his information from publicly available sources.
The Kaluga regional court ruled in December that the indictment presented by the Federal Security Service was too vague and sent it back to investigators.
Supreme Court Judge Zyamil Galiullin threw out the request to free Sutyagin after a one-hour-long closed hearing.
Sutyagin's head lawyer, Boris Kuznetsov, slammed the decision.
"Hypocritically, the court defends Sutyagin's rights and at the same time keeps him in prison," Kuznetsov told reporters. "The Kaluga court could summon enough conscience not to sentence Sutyagin and, in the meantime, couldn't collect enough courage to acquit him."
Sutyagin, held in a Kaluga prison for more than two years, refused to travel to Moscow to attend the trial Wednesday because of his poor health, Kuznetsov said.
He said Sutyagin would find an easy victory in the European Court of Human Rights.
Sergei Kovalyov, a liberal State Duma deputy and former ombudsman, said more Russians needed to file complaints to the European court.
"Russian justice will only change when the number of European court decisions on complaints from Russian citizens reaches a critical mass," he said.
Sutyagin has six months to appeal to the Strasbourg-based court.
Both Kuznetsov and Kovalyov said the Supreme Court's refusal was politically motivated.
"There may have been little politics in the Sutyagin case at the beginning, but these days purely political decisions are being made because the very prestige and dignity of the FSB depend on them," Kuznetsov said.
"It is easy to influence post-Soviet courts -- they understand the smallest hints from above," Kovalyov said, referring to President Vladimir Putin and his former career as a KGB spy.
Galiullin could not be reached for comment, and nobody picked up the telephone at the Supreme Court's press office Wednesday afternoon.
Courts will no longer be able to send cases back for further investigation after July 1. Under the new Criminal Procedural Code, which goes into effect then, a court will have to acquit the defendant if it deems the prosecution's evidence insufficient.
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