sutyagin.ru

Researcher Igor Sutyagin worked at the Institute of U.S. and Canada Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The areas of his research activity include the structure and operations of the Russian and U.S. strategic forces, strategic command and control, and nuclear weapons development and production. Igor Sutyagin is the author of numerous publication on these subjects. On October 27, 1999 Igor Sutyagin was detained by th Russian security service, the FSB. He was accused of treason and espionage and was put into prison, where he has now spent more than four years. The FSB accused Igor Sutyagin of passing classified information to a western company, Alternative Futures. Igor has never denied he worked for the company, but insits that he obtained all information from open sources and, therefore, could never pass any secrets to anybody. Igor Sutyagin has never had security clearance and has never had access to any classified information. The FSB has never been able to show any evidence of his getting or trying to get information of this kind. All information Igor has ever had access to was legitimate scientific research. The FSB also tried to alledge that the company Igor worked for, Alternative Futures, is somehow related to some intelligence service. However, as hard as it tried, it presented no evidence of this link. Igor insists that he has never had a reason to suspect that a link of this type exists. On April 7, 2004 the court sentenced Igor Sutyagin to 15 year in hard labor. This sentence shocked the Russian society and the international community. Igor's only "wrongdoing" was that he was involved in legitimate scientific analysis of publicly available information.