AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program

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AAAS Human Rights Action Network

FACTS OF THE CASE:

On 25 February 2000, the charges pending against Dr. Sergey Piontkovski of the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas (IBSS), which were widely perceived as baseless, were dropped and his passport was returned. He and his wife and child have left Sevastopol for Kiev, where they are reportedly in the process of applying for visas to the United Kingdom or the United States. The investigations against Dr. Piontkovski's colleagues at IBSS, deputy director Yuri Tokarev and Dr. Piontovski's ex-wife, Galina Piontkovskaya, have been dropped as well. Sergey Piontkovski had been charged with illegal currency transfers as a result of grants he had received from INTAS, a European organization that supports East-West scientific cooperation, and he was facing trial. In October 1999, the Ukrainian Intelligence Security Service (SBU) raided the homes and offices of Dr. Piontkovski and his colleagues, seizing their computers, scientific papers and passports. The focus of the SBU search was data on plankton bioluminescence, collected over the past 30 years in the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean and Black Seas.

According to a report published in the 10 March issue of Science, the prosecutor in Sevastopol dropped the charges against Sergey Piontkovski less than two weeks after meeting with INTAS officials. INTAS reportedly threatened to cancel 55 new science projects in Ukraine if Ukrainian scientists were faced with prosecution "simply for cashing INTAS checks."

This case attracted widespread international concern and advocacy on Dr. Piontkovski's behalf. It was covered in both Science and Nature. The European Marine Biology Society cancelled its annual meeting, which had been scheduled for September 2000 in Sevastopol. Dr. Piontkovski was recognized at a reception sponsored by the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program at the AAAS Annual Meeting in February. News of the case and letters of support were posted on a special Web site (http://geocities.com/sep_case/). Sergey Piontkovksi himself credits the worldwide attention and publicity with helping to bring about the positive outcome in this case.

(Sources of information for this alert include Science, Nature, the http://geocities.com/sep_case/ Web site, and friends and associates of Sergey Piontkovski).

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