Arms researcher spied for US

2004-04-05 21:00

Moscow - Russian weapons control researcher Igor Sutiagin was found guilty by a Moscow court on Monday of spying for the United States, Russian news agencies reported.

"The jury agreed unanimously that he was guilty," they quoted lawyer Boris Kuznetsov as saying as he left the closed-door hearing.

In January four international rights groups protested to the Council of Europe that Sutiagin, a researcher at the Institute of USA and Canada Studies at the Russian Academy of Science, was "the target of politically-motivated treason charges" and was being denied the right to a fair trial.

"Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has accused him of collecting materials on a variety of issues relating to Russia's weapons systems and other military issues, and passing them on to US military intelligence officers," said Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights and the Moscow Helsinki Group.

"Sutiagin maintains that he gathered information, using only open sources, for a UK-based consultancy firm on the basis of a legal freelance contract. If convicted, Sutiagin faces 12 to 20 years in prison."

- AFP