Russian Jury Acquits Physicist of Spy Charges
MOSCOW, Dec. 29 — In an unusual setback for Russia's security services, a jury today acquitted a physicist who had been charged with espionage for selling information to China that he and other scientists argued was not classified. [..]
The case was one of a series of espionage cases against scientists that have raised fears of a crackdown by the successor agency to the K.G.B. on poorly paid scientists who had turned in the post-Soviet period to commercial ventures abroad.
"There is a trend to arrest scientists and accuse them of spying without any foundation," Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a human rights organization, said in July.
Human rights groups, and Mr. Danilov himself, attributed the acquittal to the fact this was a rare jury trial, rather than a trial before judges who could be susceptible to state pressure. [..]
Jury trials have been held on an experimental basis over the past decade in only 9 of Russia's 89 regions. They are to be introduced throughout the country by 2007.
"The not-guilty verdict was largely thanks to a jury," Mr. Danilov told the radio station Ekho Moskvy. "When it was only a judge, it was difficult for him to reach such a verdict. There are very few judges who can make such brave decisions." [..]
Critics have claimed that the Federal Security Service, the successor to the K.G.B., has been asserting itself under the presidency of Vladimir V. Putin, who once headed the K.G.B.
Since he was elected four years ago, a number of scientists have been arrested and a number have been convicted on similar charges. [..]
In another high-profile case that is being heard by a jury, the espionage trial of Igor Sutyagin, 38, an arms control scholar, is moving slowly in a Moscow court. The trial opened last month but has been repeatedly postponed.
Mr. Sutyagin, an analyst for the Institute of United States and Canada Studies, is accused of espionage for selling freelance analyses of unclassified Russian military data to a London company that prosecutors call a front for Western intelligence.
Like Mr. Danilov, he has argued that the material he sold was available from public sources. He has been in prison for four years.
