#15 - JRL 7286
Russian court upholds passport refusal for campaigning
reporter Pasko
August 12, 2003
AFP
A Moscow court Tuesday upheld a refusal by city authorities to grant a passport to campaigning journalist Grigory Pasko who has complained that he is being trapped inside Russia.
Pasko, who was convicted of treason for exposing the navy's policy of dumping nuclear waste in the Pacific Ocean and was released from prison earlier this year, was appealing against a lower court ruling.
On July 24 a district court said that the refusal by city officials to grant him a passport for foreign travel was lawful.
Pasko said he will appeal to a higher court, the Interfax news agency reported.
The journalist, a former naval officer who has concentrated on environmental issues, planned to travel abroad at the invitation of ecological and other non-governmental organisations such as Reporters sans Frontieres and Amnesty International.
He was freed from a hard labor camp in January after serving two-thirds of a four-year sentence for treason after being found guilty of passing on classified information to Japanese media while working as a correspondent for the Pacific Fleet's newspaper Boyevaya Vakhta.
Currently the editor-in-chief of Russia's Ekologiya i Pravo (Ecology and
Law) magazine, he has always maintained his innocence.
The Moscow district court argued that Pasko's release on parole could not be regarded as a full release and that therefore he cannot claim the right to foreign travel.
Pasko's lawyer Ivan Pavlov has argued that on the contrary, release on parole is a form of exemption from punishment which "should not entail restrictions on leaving Russia."
Pasko has appealed to the Russian Supreme Court and to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to have his conviction quashed.
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