Backers Say Russian Inmate Torn by Possible Deal

MOSCOW — Until this week, Igor V. Sutyagin was being held in a prison camp not far from the Arctic Circle, near the site of what were some of Stalin’s most infamous gulags. His supporters say the location was apt, describing him as a political prisoner in Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia.

The Russian government, though, considers Mr. Sutyagin, 45, nothing more than a turncoat, a scientist who passed secrets about Russian weapons systems to the C.I.A.

After more than a decade behind bars, Mr. Sutyagin may be nearing release because he may be included in a possible prisoner exchange involving the 10 people arrested in the United States last month on charges of being part of a Russian espionage ring.

Now moved to a prison in Moscow, Mr. Sutyagin was said by his family and friends to be bewildered about the change. They said he did not want to leave in a spy swap, given that he had steadfastly denied engaging in espionage. But he feels that he has no choice.

“He basically has no other way out,” Ernst Chyorny, executive secretary of the Public Committee in Defense of Scientists in Moscow, said in an interview on Wednesday. “It is clear that otherwise, they will not free him under any other circumstances.”

Mr. Chyorny said Mr. Sutyagin had four years left on his sentence, but the authorities could punish him further by extending his term. He said Mr. Sutyagin had recently lost two appeals for early release.

Mr. Chyorny said that he went to the prison camp in Arkhangelsk, and that Mr. Sutyagin had not been physically or psychologically broken, despite often harsh treatment. He said Mr. Sutyagin had at times been put in solitary confinement.

Mr. Sutyagin, a former arms control researcher for the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies in Moscow, was convicted in 2004 of treason and espionage for selling information on nuclear submarines and missile warning systems to a British company that prosecutors said was a C.I.A. front. He said at his trial that he could not be convicted of espionage because he did not have access to state secrets.

The authorities have pressed Mr. Sutyagin to sign a confession, but he has refused. As part of the deal for his release, he signed one this week, but his lawyer said Wednesday that he did so only because he was under duress.

“This is what worries him most, that people will start to think, ‘They traded him for spies, so he must be a spy,’ ” the lawyer, Anna Stavitskaya, said in a radio interview. “He never admitted his guilt, and he doesn’t consider his conviction legal.”

She said a Russian passport was given to him at the prison in Moscow, and he was told he would soon be flown to Vienna and then London. She said he had not been allowed to shave, out of concern that he might commit suicide.

Mr. Sutyagin, who was arrested in 1999, was one of the most prominent in a series of academics who were put on trial in Russia for spying. The academics’ defenders called the charges fraudulent, saying that the F.S.B., the main successor to the K.G.B., was trying to reassert itself under Mr. Putin by creating a spy mania.

The arrests were seen as a warning signal from the security services that working with foreigners was dangerous.

Mr. Sutyagin was convicted in 2004 after many procedural twists. The first court that heard the case dismissed the charges as too vague. When it went back to court, his closed-door trial was disrupted midway when the judge and jury were replaced without explanation.

A new judge with a record of handling other accusations brought by the F.S.B. was assigned and refused to allow Mr. Sutyagin’s lawyers to present expert testimony showing that the information he handled was not secret.

Scholars and human rights groups in both Russia and abroad have taken up Mr. Sutyagin’s case.

Before his arrest, Mr. Sutyagin was a workaholic who often slept in a bed in his office and lived off instant noodles. He spent countless hours poring through books, journals and newspapers piecing together information about the Russian military arsenal.

“He had a tremendous passion for details,” said Pavel Podvig, a friend and fellow arms control researcher. “He wasn’t in this business for money or glory. He was glad to be able to do it because he found it very interesting.”

Mr. Podvig said that even if the British company that Mr. Sutyagin worked for did have intelligence connections, Mr. Sutyagin did not know it. “It was a strange kind of consultancy, and certainly he should have thought twice about working for them,” he said. “But he was really glad someone could use his knowledge and his expertise.”

Clifford J. Levy reported from Moscow, and Peter Baker from Washington.