Igor Sutyagin

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Igor Sutyagin (Игорь Сутягин) (b. January 17, 1965) was a Russian academic analyst of military technology. In 1998 he became the head of the subdivision for Military-Technical and Military-Economic Policy at the U.S. and Canada Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, where he worked before he was arrested for treason.

With a degree in physics as well as history, Sutyagin worked on topics relating to U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons development, deployment, and control, and was a co-author on one of a well-respected book on Russian strategic nuclear forces.[1]

In October 1999, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) detained Sutyagin and brought against him charges of espionage. Specifically they alleged that Sutyagin passed classified information to a London-based firm, Alternative Futures. Sutyagin acknowledged working with the company, but he alleged that all information about atomic submarines he disclosed was based on material in the open literature, and without a security clearance he never had access to classified sources.^{[citation needed]}

In 2004, after a trial, Sutyagin was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment. In December 2005 Sutyagin was transferred to a colony in Arkhangelsk Oblast.

Russian famous journalist Yulia Latynina, supported espionage accusations of Igor Sutyagin and said he could be actually involved in espionage [2], [3].

Sutyagin's case was included in a report of human rights practices in Russia prepared by the United States Secretary of State and listed as a political prisoner.[4] Human Rights Watch alleged that "the FSB showed little respect for Sutiagin’s right to a fair trial: the charges against him were vaguely worded; his assertion that he only used open sources were never verified; investigators based the charges on secret decrees that Sutiagin was not allowed to see; the FSB violated numerous rules of criminal procedure; and officials publicly denounced Sutiagin as a spy prior to and during his trial."[5]