Scholar’s Spy Trial Delayed Indefinitely
A Russian court has suspended the espionage trial of arms-control scholar Igor V. Sutyagin indefinitely, leaving him in limbo after four years in prison.
Sutyagin’s trial opened in November, when a jury was selected to hear evidence in the first spy case to go before a jury in Russia. But the judge postponed it repeatedly, at one point citing the failure of witnesses to show up and later a quarantine of Sutyagin’s prison cell. The quarantine was lifted, but the judge has yet to resume the trial.
Sutyagin, a researcher at the Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada in Moscow, was arrested in 1999 for allegedly passing military secrets to U.S. intelligence. He has denied the charges.
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