Steps Point to Possible Swap of Spy Suspects With Russia

Steps Point to Possible Swap of Spy Suspects With Russia
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: July 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/world/europe/08russia.html?_r=1&hp


MOSCOW — The Russian espionage suspects arrested in American suburbs last month appeared to be the focus of a possible trade being negotiated for a Russian scientist and other convicted spies, his lawyer and relatives said.

The mother of Igor Sutyagin, a Russian scientist convicted of spying for the United States, said Wednesday that her son had been moved to Moscow from a penal colony in preparation for a possible trade involving the Russian spy suspects detained last month.

American officials confirmed that discussions were taking place between Washington and Moscow about a possible exchange. But the officials, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, declined to give details and said no deal was likely to be completed on Wednesday.

Mr. Sutyagin was arrested in 1999 and accused of passing secrets about nuclear submarines and missile warning systems to a British company that prosecutors said was a front for the C.I.A. Mr. Sutyagin, who was convicted in 2004 and sentenced to 15 years in prison, had maintained his innocence.

In an interview, Mr. Sutyagin’s mother, Svetlana E. Sutyagina, said he had been transferred from a prison colony in northern Russia to Moscow, and that she had met with him on Wednesday morning.

Once in Lefortovo prison in Moscow, she said, her son met with American officials in the presence of Russian security service officers. Ms. Sutyagina said that he did not know the Americans’ names or positions and that they had remained silent while the Russians offered the trade.

“The conversation was with our generals,” she said. “The Americans weren’t deciding anything.”

The scientist’s lawyer and colleagues confirmed the woman’s account, according to Russian news agencies, but the Russian authorities had no immediate comment.

A message left after hours at the press office of the United States Embassy in Moscow seeking comment was not returned.

“He said they made him sign a confession and that there was not much time, as they are supposed to accuse those detained in America tomorrow,” Ms. Sutyagina said. Her son is to be pardoned and sent to Vienna, she said, adding that from there he is to be handed over to the British government.

“He doesn’t know how this trade will take place,” she said. “All he knows is he is being sent to Vienna, and there he will meet the English. It’s formulated as a pardon. That’s all.”

Mr. Sutyagin’s lawyer, Anna Stavitskaya, a prominent Moscow human rights lawyer, told reporters at a news conference that he would be swapped for one of the Russians accused in the United States of failing to register as an agent for a foreign government.

“They are going to swap him, among others, for those who have been detained in America,” Ms. Stavitskaya said.

Separately, the executive secretary of the Public Committee in Defense of Scientists, a rights organization, Ernst Chyorny, said that Mr. Sutyagin had been transferred to Moscow in anticipation of a trade.

“A decision has been made to deport him to Britain in exchange for some people whom Russia needs more than Sutyagin,” Mr. Chyorny said.

Mr. Sutyagin had been held in a prison in the Arkhangelsk region, about 600 miles north of Moscow, according to a colleague interviewed by the Russian news media.

Sergei A. Guskov, a spokesman for Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, a successor agency to the K.G.B., said he was aware of the reports but would not comment on them.

The public discussions about a trade involving Mr. Sutyagin in Moscow on Wednesday came as American prosecutors in New York were in talks with the lawyers for the recently arrested spy suspects for a rapid resolution of the case, according to people who had been briefed on the discussions. These talks, the people said, could lead to deportations or agreements to return to Russia rather than prison time.

On Wednesday, several of the 11 Russian spy suspects were ordered to be transported to face charges in New York from Boston and Virginia, where they had been held after their arrests.

A federal indictment against the 11 was also unsealed Wednesday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, although it did not include any new allegations than those that were already disclosed in criminal complaints filed last week.

The indictment did show that federal prosecutors in Manhattan are seeking to have the defendants forfeit to the United States government any assets, including real estate, that were associated with the charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering, which 9 of the 11 defendants face. That charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

All 11 defendants are also charged with conspiracy for failing to register as agents of a foreign government, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Mr. Sutyagin was arrested during a string of detentions of Russian scientists in the late 1990s and early part of this decade, on accusations of selling military or scientific secrets to American and other foreign intelligence agencies. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the shrinking of state subsidies for science, many scientists found work in research and other activities for foreign companies.

Ms. Sutyagina said that her son had been told he was on a list of convicted spies to be traded, and that he recalled only one other name on the list, a Col. Sergei V. Skirpal, a retired military officer convicted in 1996 of passing secrets to Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency and sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Colonel Skirpal’s sentencing came amid a flurry of accusations of espionage by the British. Also in 2006, the Russians claimed to have discovered a spy ring run from the British Embassy using a fake rock placed beside a Moscow street that concealed a transmitter.

Senior Russian officials also accused the British of hiding spying activity behind the work of nongovernmental organizations, and then stiffened the rules for these groups’ activities here.

Mr. Sutyagin, an arms control researcher working for the Institute of U.S.A. and Canada, a research group in Moscow, had argued during his trial that he could not be convicted of espionage as he had no access to state secrets.

Human rights organizations at the time criticized Mr. Sutyagin’s prosecution, saying it suggested a Soviet-style wariness of contacts between Russian scientists and foreigners on the part of the security services, rather than success in arresting a foreign agent. On Wednesday, Ms. Sutyagina said that her son had an appeal pending before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg but that he was compelled to abandon it by signing an admission of his guilt.

Mr. Sutyagin, a physicist by training, had been serving his prison term in two penal colonies near the Arctic Circle in the Arkhangelsk region, known as IK-1 and IK-2, before he was moved to Moscow this week to be traded, his mother said. His wife and two children are living in Obninsk, a provincial town near Moscow, she said, and have not yet made any plans for their future.

“We just learned of this today,” she said.

At first, Mr. Sutyagin had been held in solitary confinement but later was assigned to a common barrack with other prisoners, she said.

Prohibited from working in the penal colony shop, she said, he had been given the job of cleaning the isolation cells.

Ms. Sutyagina said the authorities had tried for 11 years to compel her son to confess to being an American spy. He signed the confession this week, she said, to help the spy-ring suspects in the United States avoid prison time, and out of consideration for his family.

“He knows what it is to be in prison,” she said. “If he declined, the deal would not be made and these people would be in jail here, and those people there. He understands. He doesn’t want to accept responsibility for letting those people go to prison.”


Valentin Ivanov contributed reporting from Moscow, Scott Shane from Washington and Benjamin Weiser from New York.