RUSSIA: Concerns are mounting in Russia of a stealthy return to the secrecy and intimidation of the Soviet era, reports Daniel McLaughlin, in Moscow
Russia's spycatchers are busier than at any time since the end of the Cold War, driven by a growing suspicion of foreigners and an obsession with state security inspired by President Vladimir Putin himself, liberals and human rights campaigners say.
Mr Putin was head of the FSB security service - a successor to the KGB - when investigators began building their case into Igor Sutyagin, a well-respected scientist sentenced to 15 years in jail last week for spying for the West.
Lawyers say Mr Putin and the FSB cast a long shadow over Sutyagin's trial, which saw him convicted for passing military secrets to a British firm alleged to be a front for the US Central Intelligence Agency.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other leading advocacy groups have appealed to the Council of Europe over Sutyagin's trial, accusing the FSB of "gross violations of due process and fair trial rights". The US State Department also said there remained "a general lack of transparency and questions about due process" after the trial.
But Russia's security services were unapologetic, and hailed Sutyagin's conviction as a victory for Moscow over increasingly active US and British spies.
"We constantly note attempts by the intelligence services of these countries to secure Russian citizens as sources, or, in professional terms, as agents," state-run news agencies quoted a "high-ranking source" in the security services as saying.
"In the last five years, foreign intelligence services have significantly increased their activity in this area." The intelligence official said it had been easy for the US to gather military information during the chaotic post-Soviet years of the early 1990s. But things had changed late in the decade, he insisted, accusing Washington of increasing its espionage activity to counter tighter Russian security.
"The case of Igor Sutyagin shows that Russian society is becoming stronger and that any state has interests that it will defend," he said.
The late 1990s - when the security services supposedly reasserted their authority over Russia's secrets - saw Mr Putin lead the FSB, then become prime minister and ultimately president in 2000, after Mr Boris Yeltsin stepped down.
The former KGB agent has opened the corridors of power to his old colleagues, to the detriment of the West-leaning liberals who flourished under Mr Yeltsin, but who were often tainted by the corruption that marred Russia's transition to a market economy.
In his language and demeanour, Mr Putin propounds discipline, order and patriotism, and has been rewarded with overwhelming votes of public confidence in parliamentary and presidential elections in the last four months. But liberals are appalled by what they call a stealthy return to Soviet-style secrecy and intimidation, and say the security services' manipulation of Sutyagin's trial undermined one of Mr Putin's key legal reforms - the introduction of trial by jury.
The first court to hear Sutyagin's case threw it out in 2001 for lack of evidence, but the academic was kept in jail while the FSB renewed its investigation. A second trial was abruptly suspended last year and judge and jury dismissed, opening the way for judge Ms Marina Komarova to take over in February. She had presided over two previous espionage convictions.
Rights groups say the FSB refused to countenance acquittal for Sutyagin, after being infuriated last year when a jury found Siberian scientist Mr Valentin Danilov not guilty of spying for China.
Spying cases have increased sharply under Mr Putin, and Mr Ernest Chyorny, an author and rights campaigner with the Moscow Helsinki Group, believes academics and scientists are starting to fear contact with foreigners, as they did under Josef Stalin. "I have no advice to offer other scientists who have contacts and projects with foreigners other than to leave the country and complete them abroad," Mr Chyorny said.
"It is very sad that in the 21st century we live like (we did) in 1937." Analysts say the recent murder in Qatar of Chechen rebel Mr Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev - for which two Russian are being held in the Gulf state - is further proof of increased security service activity.
Moscow is believed to have carried out its last assassination abroad in 1959.