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[Second Issue of the Day]
#8
Russian Court Hands Suspended Prison Sentence To Ex-Spy
June 25, 2002
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
MOSCOW (AP)--A Russian court Tuesday convicted former security agent Alexander Litvinenko of abuse of office and stealing explosives, giving him a three-and-a-half-year suspended prison sentence after a high-profile trial.
Litvinenko, who lives in the U.K., refused to return to Russia for the trial. Reached by phone in London Tuesday, he called the proceedings an act of revenge by his former colleagues.
Litvinenko recently wrote a book accusing his superiors at the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the KGB's main successor, of carrying out a series of apartment house bombings in 1999 that killed more than 300 people.
The bombings, which officials blamed on Chechen rebels, created a groundswell of public support for Russia's second war in Chechnya, and helped spur then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's rise to the presidency.
"Naturally, I will appeal this verdict," Litvinenko said, adding that he had no plans to visit Russia in the near future.
In addition to his suspended sentence, Litvinenko received one year of probation, said a duty officer at the Naro-Fominsk military court, 70 kilometers south of Moscow.
Litvinenko's troubles with the FSB began in 1998, when he publicly accused his superiors of ordering him to kill tycoon Boris Berezovsky.
Litvinenko was arrested a year later and spent nine months in jail on charges of abuse of office, for which he was later acquitted. He fled to the U.K. in November 2000, and received political asylum there last year.
Since then, Litvinenko has been closely associated with Berezovsky, a controversial Kremlin insider who fell out with Putin and is now a fierce opponent of the president. Berezovsky also accuses the FSB of complicity in the 1999 bombings and, like Litvinenko, lives in self-imposed exile in the U.K. to escape Russian criminal charges he says are politically driven.
The recent trials in absentia of Litvinenko and ex-KGB General Oleg Kalugin have been carried out with lightning speed before Russia's new Criminal Procedural Code, which doesn't allow for trials in absentia, takes effect in July.
Kalugin, who lives in the U.S., faces charges of high treason, reportedly based on his testimony at the espionage trial of retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel George Trofimoff, who was convicted last year of spying for the Soviet Union.
A Moscow city court is due to issue a verdict in the Kalugin case Wednesday.
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