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Bronwyn McLaren, a freelance reporter in Moscow
from the July issue of Transitions, for personal use only
A Russian military reporter who exposed the Russian navy's illegal dumping of radioactive waste in the Pacific Ocean has been held in detention for seven months in connection with what his supporters
claim are trumped-up charges of high treason.
Returning from a business trip to Japan, Captain Grigory Pasko, an investigative reporter for the Pacific Fleet's newspaper Boyevaya vakhta (Combat Vigil) was detained on 20 November 1997 and charged
with espionage. The Federal Security Service (FSB) claims Pasko jeopardized Russian defense capabilities by leaking sensitive information to the Japanese.
The authorities said recently that they have completed their investigation, but a trial date has not been set. If found guilty, Pasko, who was awaiting the trial in a squalid pre-trial detention cell, faces a
maximum prison sentence of 20 years. But the case is likely far from over. Russian law allows one-and-a-half years for an investigation and then six months for the suspect and lawyers to acquaint themselves with the details of a case. Holding a suspect without trial is common practice, and there is no time limit once the case begins moving through the courts.
Pasko has ruffled many feathers during his 14-year tenure with the Russian navy, publishing about 50 articles in the local and Japanese press denouncing the Russian navy's mishandling of nuclear
In 1993, he filmed a Russian navy tanker dumping radioactive waste into the sea of Japan; he allegedly shot the footage for NHK, a Japanese national television company. Pasko was "severely reprimanded" by his naval superiors, said his wife, Galina Morozova. But he continued to expose the covert dumping of nuclear waste and alleged human rights abuses in Russia's Pacific Fleet.
Pasko's activities became even riskier after Russia's State Secrets Law was expanded in October 1997 by presidential decree. Although the law contains a clause preventing information on the environment from
being withheld from the public, it also stipulates that all nuclear installations with military significance be considered secret. Failure to define such installations provides officials with broad leeway to define what can and what cannot be considered a state secret.
"He is being punished for exposing environmental crime," Morozova said. "There is no other reason."
Colonel Mikhail Kirillin, a spokesman at the Federal Security Bureau in Moscow, denied Pasko's arrest was an attempt to conceal environmental damage inflicted by the Pacific Fleet. "I can say that some of the documents confiscated [from Pasko] had nothing to do with ecology in the Primosky krai," Kirillin said. "It is a well-known fact that environmental activism is often used as a cover for agents."
Pasko's supporters counter that by exposing such practices Pasko was merely doing his job as a journalist. They liken his case to that of former naval officer Aleksandr Nikitin, who also faces charges of treason after co-authoring a report on the Northern Fleet's mishandling of nuclear materials (see "The Reluctant Dissident," May).
"What is happening [in Vladivostok] shocks me," Nikitin said from St.Petersburg. "Without a doubt, Grigory Pasko is in the same situation as I. This is how the FSB works. Any state information can be deemed a secret, and anyone can be arrested."
Morozova says FSB officials have offered her husband a reduced sentence if he admits to being a spy. But in comments relayed through his lawyer and wife, Pasko has maintained that all information he used or had in his possession was acquired through official channels. In a letter smuggled out of his cell earlier this year, he again proclaimed his innocence.
Pasko's trip to Japan last November was the third such visit he had made to research a story about Russian sailors buried there after World War II. It had been officially sanctioned by Pasko's military superiors. Customs officials seized what they claimed was compromising material from Pasko's suitcase on his departure from Vladivostok. However, he was given permission to leave Russia and was only arrested on his return three days later.
The nature of the confiscated documents has never been revealed by investigators and because they are so-called state secrets, Pasko's lawyers have been denied full access to them. The FSB, the main successor to the KGB, has classified Pasko's case as secret, and the trial against him, whenever it happens, will take place behind closed doors.
The Glasnost Defense Foundation, a Russian free-speech watchdog, has sent open letters to President Boris Yeltsin, Russia's prosecutor general, and other officials condemning Pasko's arrest and calling for an open and fair trial. Protests have also been mounted by the International Press Institute, the Index on Censorship, and other international human rights groups. The Russian PEN club, of which Pasko is a long-standing member, has dispatched a lawyer to Vladivostok from Moscow to boost Pasko's two-man defense team.
Morozova has been denied access to her husband since writing an article-published in the Russian press-in which she claims the charges were fabricated to punish her husband for exposing environmental crimes.
The FSB's Kirillin, however, contends such a viewpoint is illogical. "[The=46SB has] a responsibility to protect citizens from environmental damage," he said. "We have a special department devoted to this and work in full contact with environmental groups."