Igor Sutyagin, an arms researcher at the foreign policy department of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in April 2004 for passing classified information to U.K.-based Alternative Futures Consulting, which Russia's security service said was a front for U.S. intelligence.
In November 2004, the Krasnoyarsk Regional Court sentenced thermal physicist Valentin Danilov to 14 years in prison for spying for China after he had been found guilty on charges of high treason and fraud. In June 2005, the Supreme Court of Russia cut the prison term by one year. Human rights activists criticized the legal foundations of both cases.
At the same time, PACE said there were violations in spying-related cased in the U.S., Germany, Switzerland and Italy.
The resolution urging Russia to release the scientists was adopted following Cypriot parliamentarian Christos Pourgourides's report regarding fair trials of cases relating to espionage and the divulging of state secrets, which said the scientists had not received fair trials.
Russia's delegation to PACE was critical of the report.
"This report is rather unpleasant for Russia," the head of the delegation, Konstantin Kosachev, said. "We still don't accept it."
