Russian Environmentalist Still Faces Spying Charges

In a setback for environmentalist Alexander Nikitin, Russia’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday that federal authorities can pursue spying charges against the former Navy captain even though they failed to convict him at his trial last year.

Nikitin, who is accused of espionage for helping to expose radioactive pollution by the Russian navy, had asked the high court to throw out the case after a lower court ruled that the evidence was not strong enough to convict him.

The Supreme Court decided that the Federal Security Service, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, deserves a second chance to investigate Nikitin--even though it has already spent more than three years trying to send him to prison.

“I expected this result,” a weary Nikitin said after the ruling. “The problem is that the continued investigation could last forever. I have to think how I can maintain my mental stamina.”

In what has become Russia’s most prominent human rights case, Nikitin was declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International after spending months in jail for providing information for a report by the Bellona Foundation, a Norwegian environmental group, on nuclear pollution by the Russian navy above the Arctic Circle.

The former submarine captain and inspector insists that there was no secret information in the report and that he collected all his material from public sources.

His lawyers argue that the case against him has no legal foundation. They point out that he is being charged under laws that were enacted after he had made his contribution to the Bellona report. Moreover, the laws are so secret that Nikitin, his lawyers and even the judges in his case didn’t get to see them until the week his trial began in St. Petersburg in October.

At the conclusion of the trial, the three-judge panel ruled that the prosecution had failed to compile sufficient evidence to convict Nikitin. Yet instead of dismissing the charges, the judges sent the case back to the Federal Security Service for further investigation.

Both sides appealed the ruling--the prosecution arguing that it had enough evidence, and the defense contending that the case should have been thrown out.

After both sides weighed in Thursday at a closed hearing, the Supreme Court ruled that the indictment against Nikitin had violated Russia’s rules of criminal procedure. The indictment did not document what crimes Nikitin allegedly committed, specify when the alleged crimes occurred or identify the documents from which Nikitin allegedly took secret information, the high court found.

The court, however, agreed with the lower court that these errors could be corrected by returning the case to the Federal Security Service for further investigation.

Prosecutors, who have been tight-lipped about the case, had no comment.

Nikitin’s lawyers said the ruling gives the authorities unlimited time to conduct the investigation and could leave Nikitin dangling for years.

“I have no clue how the investigation will comply with the instruction to ‘make the indictment more detailed and accurate,’ ” said Genri M. Reznik, one of Nikitin’s attorneys. “It was not done in the first place for the very reason that it has never been possible.”

Nikitin’s defenders charged that, just as in Soviet times, the court did not dare to cross the powerful security agency that brought the charges against Nikitin.