AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program

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AAAS Human Rights Action Network

FACTS OF THE CASE:

On 4 February 1999, the Russian Supreme Court returned the case of Alexandr Nikitin, a Russian engineer working for the Norwegian ecological foundation Bellona, to the Russian Federal Security Services (FSB) for further investigation. The Court confirmed a St. Petersburg City Court ruling of 29 October 1998. Nikitin remains under investigation on charges of treason and espionage. He faces the threat of long-term imprisonment, and his passport has been confiscated. He is not permitted to leave St. Petersburg. His wife and daughter obtained political asylum in Canada.

The St. Petersburg City Court declared that Nikitin was deprived of any possibility of a defense, because the indictment against him was too vague. The case then went to the Supreme Court, where it was sent back to the FSB for further investigation.

Nikitin was arrested on 6 February 1996 and held for ten months in an infamous former KGP prison as part of what has been referred to as a Russian Federal Security Services (FSB) offensive against the environmental movement. His case is based on secret, retroactive decrees to which he is not allowed access and which stem from his work for the Bellona Foundation. The FSB claims that the report Nikitin helped write, regarding the poor condition of nuclear facilities on the Kola peninsula, forty-five kilometers from the Norwegian border, contains state secrets, but Nikitin and Bellona maintain that the report is based on publicly available information. Ironically, the King of Norway was in Russia recently to sign an agreement between Russia and Norway to clean up the radioactive waste disposal sites that Nikitin had originally brought to the attention of the Bellona Foundation.

The three-year investigation of Nikitin and similar such cases have had a chilling effect on the environmental movement in Russia. Grigory Pasko, a journalist reporting on nuclear contamination, has recently been indicted on the charge of high treason. He faces a twenty-year prison sentence. The continued persecution of individuals reporting on nuclear environmental contamination may result in the unchecked dumping of nuclear waste and further environmental degradation.

The Acting Procurator General of Russia has the authority to dismiss Nikitin's case. However, this is unlikely without high-level political pressure, as he publicly called Nikitin a spy in 1996. U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright publicly referred to Nikitin's case during a recent speech in Moscow, and Vice President Al Gore privately appealed to the former Russian Prime Minister for Nikitin's release. There are now calls for Vice President Gore to publicly call for Nikitin's release before his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Primakov in March. Nikitin's lawyers will bring the case to the European Human Rights Court in March.

The arrest of Alexandr Nikitin is in violation of Article 42 of the Russian Constitution, which prohibits secrecy in matters that may constitute hazards towards the environment or the health of human beings. In addition, it is contrary to human rights provisions enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the Russian Federation is a state party. They include:

Under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

• No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile (Article 9); and
• Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression . . . (Article 19).

Under the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:

• Everyone has the right to liberty and security of the person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention . . . (Article 9); and
• Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers . . . (Article 19).

(Information for this update was provided by the Bellona Foundation's Web site: . Other sources of information include the Moscow Human Rights Research Center, The Toronto Star, The St. Petersburg Times, and the American Chemical Society.)

RECOMMENDED ACTION:

Please send telexes, telegrams, faxes, or airmail letters:

• requesting that Russian authorities drop the charges against Alexandr Nikitin immediately and unconditionally on the grounds that they stem solely from the legitimate scientific work that he was conducting for the Bellona Foundation;
• calling on the Russian authorities to provide a full and detailed explanation of the charges against Nikitin;
• indicating that actions against environmental research can only make the environmental cleanup of Russia more difficult; and on letters to U.S. officials;
• calling on Vice President Gore to publicly speak out against the continued investigation against Nikitin because of its significance to the environmental viability of Russia's northern coast before his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Primakov in March.

APPEAL AND INQUIRY MESSAGES SHOULD BE SENT TO:

Boris Yeltsin
President of the Russian Federation
Rossiyskaya Federatsiya
g. Moskva
Kreml
Presidentu Rossiyskoy Federatsii Yeltsinu B.N.
Russia
Fax: 011 (7095) 206 5173


Sergey V. Kiriynko
Prime Minister of Russia
Krasnopresnenskaya naberezhnaya, 2, 103274
Moscow
Russia


Boris Y. Nemtsov
Vice President of the Russian Federation and
Head of Interagency Commission on State Secrets
Krasnopresnenskaya naberezhnaya, 2, 103274
Moscow
Russia


The Honorable William Jefferson Clinton
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20006


The Honorable Albert Gore
Vice President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20006

COPIES SENT TO:

Academician Ashot Ar. Sarkissov
Russian Academy of Sciences
32a, Leninsky ave., V-71, Moscow, GSP - 1, 117993
Russia


President of the Russian Academy of Science
Russian Academy of Science
52, B. Tul'skaya, Moscow, 113191
Russia


Yumashev B. Valentin
Head of Presidential Administration
Kreml, 103132, Moscow
Russia


The Honorable Madeleine Albright
Secretary of State
Department of State
2201 C Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20006
Fax: 202-647-7120

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