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Igor Sutyagin (Игорь Сутягин) (b. January 17, 1965) is a Russian arms control and nuclear weapons specialist. In 1998 he became the head of the subdivision for Military-Technical and Military-Economic Policy at the Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, where he worked before he was arrested for treason, although he had no access to classified documentation as a civilian researcher.

With a degree in physics as well as history, Sutyagin worked on topics relating to U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons development, deployment and control and he is a co-author of a well-respected book on the Russian strategic nuclear forces.

In October 1999, the Russian Federal Security Service detained Sutyagin and brought against him charges of espionage. They alleged that Sutyagin passed classified information to a London-based firm, Alternative Futures. Sutyagin acknowledged working with the company, but he said that all information about atomic submarines he disclosed was based on material in the open literature, and without a security clearance he never had access to classified sources .

In 2004, after a trial, Sutyagin was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment. In December 2005 Sutyagin was transferred to a colony in Arkhangelsk.

Russian journalist Yulia Latynina argued that although communications of Sutyagin with foreign spy agencies have never been proven, he passed open-source information to suspicious foreigners, which must be punished. She said that even providing information about temperature in Moscow to CIA would represent a high treason . In reply, lawyer Boris Kuznetsov, who represented Sutyagin previously, hinted that the Russian secret service FSB benefited from her program in Echo of Moscow , which she vigorously denied .

Sutyagin's case was listed as a political prisoner by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. . Human Rights Watch stated that "the FSB showed little respect for Sutiagin’s right to a fair trial: the charges against him were vaguely worded; his assertion that he only used open sources were never verified; investigators based the charges on secret decrees that Sutiagin was not allowed to see; the FSB violated numerous rules of criminal procedure; and officials publicly denounced Sutiagin as a spy prior to and during his trial."

References

1. ^ The Chekist Takeover of the Russian State, Anderson, Julie (2006), International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, 19:2, 237 - 288.

External links

• Support Igor Sutyagin website (English)
• The Igor Sutyagin Affair (Russian)
• Case 52 (English)
• Human Rights Watch's page on Sutyagin

• Russian physicists
• Russian political prisoners
• Living people
• 1965 births
• Russian criminals