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Sutyagin sentenced to 15 years

On April 7, 2004 Moscow City Court sentenced Igor Sutyagin, a military analyst at the Russian Institute for the US and Canada, to 15 years of hard-labor. Igor Sutyagin was accused by the Kaluga Regional FSB Department of giving information to foreign intelligence in 1999.

The FSB found that Sutyagin had contacted Sean Kidd and Nadya Lock, two representatives of the mysterious London-based firm “Alternative Future” which hired Sutyagin as a part-time consultant on questions related to Russian military technologies. Sutyagin met Kidd and Lock in Europe and Britain, and was paid for his consultations. The FSB announced that Kidd and Lock were US Defense Intelligence officers, given details of “Alternative Future” whereabouts and contacts. But by then the firm had disappeared.

The Sutyagin trial took five years. But the FSB failed to present evidence that Sutyagin transferred secrets to the “Alternative Future”. It was generally thought that Sutyagin had some good contacts with secret holders, because he lectured at the naval academy, but the Kaluga FSB investigators failed to find anyone who might have passed Sutyagin secret information he could sell to the Alternative Future. Instead, the FSB decided to claim that Sutyagin collected the information by analyzing publications in the Russian press, and that very analysis was deemed to be the Secret.

In 2001 the Kaluga Regional Court decided that there were insufficient grounds to accuse Sutyagin and the case was sent for more detailed investigation. Although Kaluga's FSB officers involved in the investigation were promoted (chief of the local investigations sector Victor Kalashnikov was given the rank of a colonel immediately after the case was brought to court) it was generally thought in the Lubyanka that the case might be lost. But then the scandal expanded beyond the borders of Kaluga: high-ranking officials of the FSB commented on the case in the media, including Nikolai Volobuev, deputy chief of counterintelligence department. Meanwhile human rights organizations said Sutyagin had fallen victim to spy mania.

In 2002 the case of Igor Sutyagin was transferred from Kaluga to Moscow, and Sutyagin himself was placed in Lefortovo. The Office of Investigations and Nikolay Oleshko personally were put in charge of the next trial, this time in Moscow city court.

In response Sutyagin asked for a trial by jury, at that time a new practice for the Russian courts. In November 2003, a jury trial of the Sutyagin case began, chaired by Judge Petr Shtunder. But the trial was soon postponed and the jury was dismissed when in February 2004 Shtunder announced he would not proceed with the case. He gave no explanation. In March 2004 a new trial began, this time chaired by Judge Marina Komarova (previously she was the judge in Moiseev’s trial). In April the new jury found Sutyagin guilty. On April 7, 2004 Marina Komarova sentenced Sutyagin to 15 years of hard-labor.

Sutyagin’s astonished lawyers stated that the jury was manipulated by the Federal Security Service, but their claims were ignored.

Soon after the verdict was handed down, the defense found out that one of the jurors was on a list of candidate jurors for the Moscow District Military Court. It was a mystery how he had ended up at the Moscow City Court: he appeared to have been specifically transferred to the trial. In August Sutyagin's lawyers identified him as Grigory Yakimishen. Agentura.Ru found out that in th 1990s Yakimishen served at the Russian embassy to Poland and was named by Polish press as Foreign intelligence agent. Polish newspapers also reported that Grigory Yakimishen had been recruited by Polish intelligence.

On the 22nd of October 2004 the Yakimishen story was exposed in the Moscow News by Agentura.Ru authors. On the 26th of October, speaking to Echo Moskvy radio station, Sutyagin’s lawyer Anna Stavitskaya confirmed that “one of the trial jurors who convicted Sutyagin turned out to be a former staff member of the Russian security services”, implying that the jury was biased. Almost four years later, in July 2008 the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg decided to rule on the Sutyagin case and declared admissible Sutyagin’s complaint concerning lawfulness of the Moscow City Court and the fairness of the trial.

On July 9, 2010 Sutyagin was one of four Russians exchanged in Vienna for 10 SVR agents exposed in the US.