04/05/2011 Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Strasbourg, 04.05.2011 – Christos Pourgourides (Cyprus, EPP/CD), Chairperson of the PACE Legal Affairs Committee and the Assembly’s former rapporteur on “Fair trial issues in criminal cases concerning espionage or divulging state secrets”, has welcomed the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg finding a violation by the Russian Federation of scientist Igor Sutyagin’s right to a fair trial.
“Igor Sutyagin is one of the victims of the ‘spy mania’ period in Russia in the early years of this millennium, which I exposed in my report adopted by the Assembly in 2006,” said Mr Pourgourides. “The Russian security services pulled all the strings to jail several free-thinking scientists, journalists and environmental whistleblowers. I sincerely hope that the other cases described in my report, especially that of Mr Danilov, will also be resolved in a satisfactory way. I should like to use this opportunity to reiterate the Assembly’s appeal to the Russian authorities to set Mr Danilov free.”
Igor Sutyagin, who was included in the high-profile exchange of “spies” between the United States and Russia in July 2010 after having spent more than six years in prison, had reportedly been coerced into accepting the exchange deal and continued to claim his innocence.