Moscow Times

July 21, 2000

Nikitin Goes Back To Court, Yet Again

By Joe Boris and Anna Badkhen

Special to The Moscow Times

WASHINGTON -- Believing he had put the whole long ordeal behind him, environmental whistle-blower Alexander Nikitin learned while in Washington this week that prosecutors are making another attempt to try him on treason and espionage charges.

Nikitin said he was notified Wednesday evening that the Prosecutor General's Office is appealing his acquittal and requesting that the more than four-year-old case be sent back for more investigation.

The Presidium of the Supreme Court confirmed Thursday that it has agreed to hear the appeal Aug. 2. If the Presidium upholds the appeal, the 24 volumes in the Kafkaesque case against the retired navy captain-turned-environmentalist will once again land on the desk of Federal Security Service investigators in St. Petersburg.

Nikitin, who is in Washington as part of a tour to highlight environmental problems and human rights violations in Russia, said Thursday the appeal was a desperate act by the Federal Security Service, or FSB, which he consistently referred to by the initials of its Soviet forerunner, the KGB.

"My opinion is this case has been embarrassing for the KGB so they have begun an additional investigation," he said during a talk in downtown Washington.

Nikitin was charged with treason and espionage in 1996 after contributing to a report published by the Norwegian environmental group Bellona about the Northern Fleet's careless handling of the nuclear waste it generates.

He was found not guilty by the St. Petersburg city court in December, but the federal prosecutor's office appealed to the Supreme Court.

As part of its appeal, the prosecution requested permission to start over and reassemble the entire case against Nikitin. With unusual logic, the prosecution argued that the case called for reinvestigation because investigators had violated Nikitin's civil rights the first time around.

Three judges of the Supreme Court, who heard the appeal in April, upheld the decision of the lower court. The prosecutors have now appealed to the Supreme Court's 11-member Presidium.

Nikitin said this is the first time in post-Soviet history that a decision of the high court has been sent to its Presidium for review.

Yury Vdovin, co-chairman of the St. Petersburg-based Citizens' Watch advocacy group, blamed the attempt to revive the case on the presidential envoy to the Northwestern federal district, Viktor Cherkesov. Cherkesov, who headed the St. Petersburg FSB branch until he was promoted to deputy head of the FSB last year, masterminded the Nikitin case.

"Cherkesov is sore about losing the case," Vdovin said. "He wants to retaliate."

Vdovin said he did not believe the Presidium could legally uphold the appeal. "I hope that this [hearing] will be another shameful mark in the shameful history of our security services," he said.

Jon Gauslaa, a Bellona lawyer, said in a telephone interview from Oslo, Norway, that although the Presidium agreed July 11 to hear the appeal, which was filed May 30, the defense lawyers were only notified Wednesday. He said the lawyers were informed they did not necessarily have to be present at the Aug. 2 hearing.

Nikitin said the prosecutors' action seemed timed for maximum political effect because it would cut short his three-month speaking tour in the West. He said he intended to return to Russia to continue his legal fight. His wife lives in Canada and their daughter is a college student in Massachusetts.

Nikitin, who was denied permission to travel abroad while his case was pending, was in Washington to receive the prestigious Goldman environmental award that he could not collect in 1997. He also was meeting with congressional and administration officials.

His appearance Thursday was sponsored by U.S.-government funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Amnesty International. After the speech, he rushed off to Capitol Hill to address the Helsinki Commission, a panel set up by Congress to monitor compliance on security agreements in Europe, and receive, with Bellona, the Sierra Club's Earthcare Award for work in environmental protection.

Nikitin was arrested in February 1996 and held in jail for nearly 11 months. He was initially denied a lawyer and also a doctor when he complained of poor health. When charges were eventually filed, they were based on military decrees so secret that neither he, nor his lawyers nor even the investigators were allowed to see them.

But by then, Nikitin's case was attracting international concern, with Amnesty International naming him a prisoner of conscience. He was Amnesty's first Russian prisoner of conscience since the days when Andrei Sakharov was held by the Soviet Union in internal exile.

In December 1996, Nikitin was released from jail on condition that he not leave St. Petersburg without special permission from the FSB.

But it was a particularly grim and unpleasant sort of freedom. Nikitin complained that the government had tapped the telephones at his office and home. FSB agents not only kept him under surveillance, he said, but they also slashed his car tires and poured glue into his car door locks, followed his wife and daughter around the city and attacked one of his lawyers, Ivan Pavlov.