Russia 100715 Basic Political Developments

US-RUSSIA SPY PROBE

RIA: Freed Russian spy Sutyagin receives British residence permit

http://en.rian.ru/world/20100715/159819589.html
10:46 15/07/2010

MOSCOW, July 15 (RIA Novosti) - Scientist Igor Sutyagin, who was one of four Russians exchanged last week as part of a Russian-U.S. spy swap deal, has received a residence permit, Sutyagin's lawyer told RIA Novosti on Thursday.

"Yesterday, he congratulated his mom on her birthday in a phone conversation and said he has received a passport and a document he translated as a residence permit," Anna Stavitskaya said.

Sutyagin is still living in a provincial British town, Sutyagin's lawyer said. "He said he needs some time for adaptation," she added.

Sutyagin has denied information that intelligence services officers are working with him, Stavitskaya said.

In April 2004, Sutyagin, a Russian arms control and nuclear weapons specialist, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in Arkhangelsk, northwest Russia, for sharing state secrets with U.S. military intelligence.

Under the spy exchange deal, which took place in Vienna on July 9, Russia pardoned and released four prisoners jailed for spying for the United States in exchange for ten people accused by the United States of spying for Russia.
Washington Post: Medvedev pardoned petty criminals, corrupt officials along with spies

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/14/AR2010071405516.html

By Julia Ioffe

Thursday, July 15, 2010; A08

MOSCOW -- At midnight last Thursday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree pardoning four Russians jailed for years because of their contacts with the West. The group was swiftly flown to Vienna and exchanged for 10 spies arrested in the United States just days earlier.

In far less dramatic fashion, and with none of the Cold War intrigue, Medvedev also pardoned 16 other people that night, most of them obscure petty criminals or corrupt local officials.

One was the director of a machine-tool plant who was removed from his post in May for failing to pay his employees. Another was a 25-year-old doing time for theft. Another was the deputy head of a committee overseeing local federal property who received six years of probation on July 8, 2004, for fraud and abuse of power -- a sentence that ran out just as Medvedev signed his pardon.

This group had little in common with the Russian intelligence officers accused of selling state secrets to the CIA, and that might have been the point. Pardoning the seemingly random convicts along with the higher-profile group seemed to be an important tactical maneuver by the Kremlin to play down the spy incident and deflect accusations that the law was being applied selectively.

"This was the president showing that he is ready to pardon not only under extraordinary circumstances but is also willing to exercise his constitutional power," said Alexey Makarkin, a political analyst with the Center for Political Technologies. "It was designed to show that any Russian can count on this option, not just a person for whom the U.S. asks."

More complex cases were also in the mix, but none had anything to do with espionage. Sergey Ananyev of Smolensk, for instance, was hastily sentenced in 2003 to 15 years in jail for murder. He maintained his innocence after a trial that he was not allowed to attend. Last July, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in Ananyev's favor and awarded him 2,000 euros.

Then there is the case of Ivan Vinogradov, a former paratrooper who was held in Butyrka, one of Moscow's most notorious prisons, for shooting a police officer who wouldn't accept a $2,000 bribe.

One day in October 2001, when his mother came to visit, Vinogradov approached a guard at the entrance to the visitors' room, handed him a false ID and, wishing him a good day, walked out. He was caught three months later after a shootout with police and a foiled suicide attempt.

"They combined the cases in order to demonstrate that this is a normal pardon," said Sergei Markov, a member of the lower house who chairs the parliament's council on global politics. "They didn't want to make this into a special case."

According to Article 71 of the Russian constitution, the president has the power to grant pardons to citizens who appeal to him for clemency. During Boris Yeltsin's presidency, a panel of rights activists and independent lawyers recommended cases for pardons or commutation of death sentences (Russia now has a moratorium on the death penalty). By the time he stepped down in 1999, Yeltsin had pardoned about 50,000 people.

Vladimir Putin, Yeltsin's successor, briefly continued the practice but disbanded the panel in 2001 to stanch the torrent of pardons.

Today, pardons are granted to prisoners who have admitted guilt, served most of their sentence, exhibited good behavior or are somehow exceptional -- a mother of many children, say, or a veteran (such as Vinogradov, who served in Afghanistan).

The prisoners appeal to the president through a regional committee, which passes its candidates for clemency up to the Kremlin. There, presidential advisers examine the materials and make nonbinding recommendations to the president.

"This is done on a regular basis," said Lev Ponomaryov, a human rights activist with the Moscow Helsinki Group. "It is a necessary and important practice."

Ioffe is a special correspondent.

Boston.com: Russian spies left behind soda cans with fake bottoms, and plenty of pills

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/07/by_shelley_murp_4.html
July 14, 2010 06:30 PM

By Shelley Murphy,Globe Staff

FBI searches of the Cambridge home and a safe deposit box belonging to a couple of Russian spies turned up some interesting tools of the trade: a Dr. Pepper can with a fake lid; a Coke can with a fake bottom; foreign currency from Europe and Asia; and various identification cards.

Documents unsealed yesterday in US District Court in Boston detailed the items that were seized during searches of 35B Trowbridge St. and a safe deposit box at a Bank of America in Harvard Square shortly after the June 27 arrests of the married couple who passed themselves off as French Canadians Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley.

Many of the items seized from the home the couple shared with their two sons, ages 16 and 20, included electronics, computer equipment and other gadgetry. A Sony Playstation and games; a Toshiba Satellite computer; cellphones, cameras, laptops, hard drives, memory sticks, credit cards, photos, documents, and files were seized.

The raids also netted numerous unidentified pills and capsules in a variety of colors.

"The pills and vitamins indicate to me that they were well integrated into the Cambridge social scene,'' said Boston attorney Robert Sheketoff, who represented Foley, adding that the unidentified pills were probably vitamins and anti-oxidants.

An FBI affidavit filed in support of the search warrants also revealed that FBI agents seized a bottle of invisible ink in 2006 when they conducted a secret search of an apartment on the same street that the couple lived in before buying the townhouse at 35B Trowbridge St. last month.

The Cambridge couple revealed their true identities as Andrey Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova on Thursday while pleading guilty in federal court in Manhattan to being unregistered agents of a foreign government.

They were among 10 Russian spies who were sent back to their homeland last week in one of the most dramatic spy swaps in US history.

The FBI filed an 73-page affidavit outlining why they wanted to search the Trowbridge Street home that included the criminal complaint that has already been made public. The entire package can be found here.

After the search of the Trowbridge Street residence, the FBI filed a document called a return, which is an inventory of the items seized from inside the spies' home. That document, which includes the reference to the soda cans with fake bottoms, can be found here.

The FBI filed a much smaller, separate package of paperwork, when they sought court permission to search a safe deposit box rented by the spies at the Bank of America branch in Harvard Square. The application for that search warrant can be found here.

The return, which is handwritten by an FBI agent, can be found here.