>From Johnsons Russia List 4111 16 Feb 2000

#12
Moscow Times
February 16, 2000 
FSB Keeps 'Traitorous' Scholar Jailed 
By Sarah Karush
Staff Writer

OBNINSK, Central Russia -- Until his arrest, Igor Sutyagin lived the quiet 
life of an academic, doing research on arms control and security issues at 
Moscow's prestigious U.S.A. and Canada Institute. Occasionally quoted as an 
expert in the mainstream press, he was mostly known only within a small 
circle of scholars. 

More than three months into a stay in a Kaluga jail, Sutyagin, 35, is still 
largely unnoticed - except by the investigators trying to prove he is a spy, 
and by a small band of supporters lobbying for his release. 

Sutyagin's friends and family said they are hard pressed to understand why he 
was targeted by the Federal Security Service, or FSB, and charged with 
treason. 

They said he is certainly not a spy, nor has he attempted to expose 
government wrongdoing, as did environmentalist Alexander Nikitin and 
journalist Grigory Pasko, who were charged with treason and acquitted last 
year. 

"Igor's not an environmentalist. He's never been an activist," Sutyagin's 
colleague, Pavel Podvig, said in an interview in Moscow this week. "It's hard 
to imagine what he could have done to anger someone." 

"Everybody's in such a state of shock," Sutyagin's wife, Irina Sutyagina, 
said last week in an interview at the family's home in Obninsk, about 100 
kilometers from Moscow in the Kaluga region. "We don't know where this is 
coming from." 

Sitting at her kitchen table, Sutyagina talks above the din of oriental wind 
chimes that hang in the doorway, chirping parakeets on the window sill and a 
nervous 6-month-old chow chow. 

With the family's breadwinner gone, Sutyagina struggles to support their two 
daughters, ages 8 and 9. When her husband was arrested, the FSB seized all 
their hard currency in addition to research materials. Like most Russian 
families, the Sutyagins kept their life savings in dollars at home. 

Since the arrest, she has been able to visit Sutyagin only twice at the 
Kaluga detention center, where, she said, he shares a cell built for three 
with four other people. 

"He never had to deal with those kinds of people before, for the most part. 
It's hard, you have to get used to the rules. It's a different world, with 
its language, its own actions, ... its own currency," Sutyagina said. 

And as the investigation drags on, there are few signs that he will be able 
to come home any time soon. 

In a telephone interview Tuesday, Viktor Kalashnikov, head of the FSB's 
Kaluga region investigative department, confirmed the treason charge still 
stands against Sutyagin, but he said he could not reveal the exact nature of 
the accusation while the case is under investigation. 

Sutyagina said the FSB investigators seem to be casting about for a case 
instead of checking out specific suspicions. "It's clear they aren't just 
analyzing what they have. They are digging," she said. 

The treason article in the criminal code includes divulging state secrets and 
gathering information - secret or not - for foreign intelligence services. 

As far as state secrets go, Sutyagin's colleagues said he could not have 
known any since he didn't have access to them. 

"We don't use classified sources, knowing that under this pretext, we could 
be charged with something," said Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the 
U.S.A. and Canada Institute. 

"Everything he did, he did with his own head," Sutyagina said. 

Sutyagin's supporters also scoff at suggestions he was gathering intelligence 
for anyone. 

The day of the arrest, Oct. 28, FSB agents also searched the apartment of 
Sutyagin's American colleague Joshua Handler, a Princeton University 
researcher who was working in Moscow. Handler was questioned about Sutyagin, 
and his research materials and computer were confiscated. 

In an Oct. 30 report, government-controlled ORT television said, "according 
to FSB sources," Sutyagin had confessed to gathering intelligence. The 
station suggested, without offering any evidence, Handler was one of 
Sutyagin's main contacts. 

"It looks like the FSB considers Joshua Handler to be the main spy in the 
case," said Podvig, whose office and apartment were also searched around the 
time Sutyagin was arrested. 

Podvig, a researcher at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental 
Studies, is the editor of the book "Russian Strategic Nuclear Weapons," to 
which Sutyagin contributed. The FSB seized all the remaining copies of the 
book from Podvig's office. 

Kalashnikov said the FSB did not intend to charge Handler with any crime. But 
he said the FSB would like to question him further as a witness in the case. 

"He is in the United States now, so we will work with him there," he said, 
adding that Handler was free to continue working in Russia. 

Handler said he left Russia when U.S. Embassy officials advised him to do so 
after his apartment was searched. 

Podvig said he did not think the case was part of a general crackdown on 
nuclear researchers. Rather, he said, the investigators likely believe 
Sutyagin's contacts with foreigners and money he received for his work from 
Western organizations make him an intelligence operative. 

"The idea that all charitable foundations are covers for spies is a very 
popular idea within the FSB," Podvig said. 

Kremenyuk said, "This is another clumsy attempt to pounce on objectionable 
people against the backdrop of worsening relations with the West. I don't 
really believe that Sutyagin was involved in espionage." 

Compared to the vociferous supporters of Nikitin, Pasko and scientist 
Vladimir Soifer, whose apartment was searched by the FSB last year, 
Sutyagin's colleagues have been strikingly quiet. A group of supporters 
maintains a web site (www.case52.org), but so far has not publicly campaigned 
for his release. 

"It's a very difficult situation," Sutyagina said. "It could happen to any of 
them. Because this is not an institute that studies butterflies or plants, 
but one that studies precisely these issues." 

She added that at first her husband thought it would not be wise to attract 
publicity to his case. 

"He thought they'd figure things out without any fuss," she said. "He 
cooperated. He told them everything - both what he should have and what he 
should not have. He actually told them a lot that they didn't know, and they 
latched onto those things." 

*******

Andrew Jameson
Chair, Russian Committee, ALL 
Languages and Professional Development
1 Brook Street, Lancaster LA1 1SL UK
Tel: 01524 32371  (+44 1524 32371)


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