By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — In Russia, anyone who blows the whistle on the mishandling of radioactive waste can expect at least passing attention from the security forces. If the waste comes from naval reactors, and the whistle-blower is a serving or retired military officer, the persecution can involve treason charges carrying a 20-year prison term.
A new twist, however, is that within Russia's much-put-upon officer corps there is now enough anger to ensure that such cases can evoke sharp opposition not just from environmentalists, but within military circles as well.
Since November, Captain Grigory Pasko, a journalist on the newspaper of the Russian navy's Pacific Fleet, has been held on charges of "betraying the homeland through espionage". In a case that has much in common with the internationally notorious prosecution of a St Petersburg nuclear safety activist, retired navy Captain Aleksandr Nikitin, Pasko is accused of having gathered secret materials and transmitted them to representatives of a foreign organisation.
The victimisation of Pasko, who is based in the port city of Vladivostok, has now met with stinging criticism from the recently emerged Movement for the Defence of the Army, Defence Industry and Military Science.
Founded last year by retired General Lev Rokhlin, this movement is centred on retired military officers hostile to the government's plans for big cutbacks in defence spending. Rokhlin's organisation is also considered to reflect the views of many serving officers.
Even before his arrest, Pasko was no stranger to the attentions of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor to the KGB. Since 1992, he has investigated the role of private companies in dumping radioactive waste from the Pacific Fleet's nuclear reactors.
In 1993 he filmed a Russian tanker dumping radioactive materials in the Sea of Japan, precipitating a scandal when the film was later shown on Japanese television.
Despite harassment, Pasko continued to collect materials on nuclear waste, and to publish articles based on them. Last autumn, as part of this work, he visited the district Department of Agriculture. There, he had expected to conduct an interview, but was instead given a sheaf of documents. More were provided to him during a subsequent visit to the offices of the Shipbuilders Trade Union.
None of these documents were marked as secret. Meaning to work on them, Pasko took them with him on November 13, when he set off to fly to Japan, where he was to research an article on Russian war graves. But as he passed through customs at Vladivostok airport, he was searched and the documents were seized. When he returned on November 20, he was arrested.
According to Rear-Admiral German Ugryumov, the head of the Pacific Fleet's FSB unit, the materials which the agriculture officials and the trade union had given Pasko contained "secret information ... linked to the battle-readiness of the fleet, the carrying out of particular exercises, the nuclear complex of the Pacific Fleet, and so forth".
Once, such a case would automatically have been played out in line with the FSB's script, protests from environmentalists notwithstanding. But in recent times, political moods in the military have become less and less pro-regime.
On February 9 retired Rear-Admiral Yury Maksimenko, until recently head of intelligence for the Pacific Fleet, appeared on Vladivostok television and vehemently attacked most of the FSB's "proofs" of Pasko's guilt.
In Maksimenko's view, the real reason Pasko had been arrested had nothing to do with espionage. Instead, it stemmed from the fact that the post of editor of the fleet's newspaper was about to fall vacant, while Pasko was one of the leading contenders for the job.
Maksimenko, it is clear, was not acting solely on his own initiative. He is the head of the local division of Rokhlin's movement, and is also a spokesperson for the Council of Fleet Veterans.
On February 10, Pasko's lawyers held a press conference, detailing how the FSB had repeatedly breached their client's rights. Pasko had been interrogated virtually non-stop throughout the night following his arrest. When his apartment was searched and more materials seized, he was not present.
In clear violation of the Criminal Code, the public defenders had been denied the chance to familiarise themselves with documents bearing on the investigation. Through his statements to the press, fleet FSB chief Ugryumov had placed improper pressures on the investigators.
Meanwhile, are state secrets indeed contained in the documents Pasko had in his possession? The task of ruling on this question has been assigned to the Main Administration of the General Staff of the Defence Ministry.
"This organisation is merely responsible for the safekeeping of secret documents", supporters of the jailed journalist pointed out in a recent statement. "It does not have experts qualified to determine whether state secrets are present in documents that do not have the corresponding classification."
The statement went on to note that the Main Administration of the General Staff has a bad record on environmental questions. In particular, it has "issued a series of orders to classify information on the environment as secret, a move that contravenes the laws 'On the Protection of the Natural Environment' and 'On Information, its Dissemination and Protection.'"
Pasko's lawyers are now suing to have a different organisation decide whether the seized documents contain state secrets.
Efforts are also continuing to win Pasko's release from prison. An earlier plea was turned down by the Military Court of the Pacific Fleet, despite evidence that Pasko suffers from a chronic illness.
Like the case of Aleksandr Nikitin, the FSB's campaign to "nail" Pasko has been virtually ignored by Moscow newspapers wary of antagonising the security forces — despite the alarming implications of the case for press freedom.
Russia's environmentalists, however, are made of sterner stuff than its media editors. The foundation Eko-Logos, one of the best known environmental organisations in Russia's Far East, has worked tirelessly to defend Pasko. Postings by Eko-Logos on e-mail bulletins have provided the main Russia-wide source of information on the case.
Now that the Movement for the Defence of the Army has moved to defend Pasko, there is a real possibility that the case will win the notoriety it deserves. For Russia's aggrieved military, raising a scandal over the persecution by the FSB of a navy journalist makes considerable sense.
As the armed forces have grown increasingly alienated from the government, the FSB has remained closely aligned with it; consequently, a falling-out between the military and the security forces has been only a matter of time.
In denouncing the charges against Pasko, Rokhlin's movement and the officers for whom it speaks have the chance to be seen standing up for environmental protection, press freedom and the rights of accused persons, against security police who are seen as fronting up for unpopular government authorities.
After their joyless experience with Nikitin, the security forces may have lit another exploding cigar. It will be ironic if this time, their main foes are other elements within the country's "power ministries".