A RUSSIAN scientist jailed for passing atomic secrets to the CIA was believed to have arrived in Vienna yesterday as part of a “spy swap” for sleeper agents captured in the United States.
Moscow media reported that Igor Sutyagin (45) was due to fly to Vienna, from where British intelligence officers would escort him to London. He was arrested in 1999 and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment at a trial in 2004.
In New York last night all 10 alleged Russian agents pleaded guilty to being unregistered foreign agents. Officials had been reportedly in discussions with the lawyers of the alleged long-term, deep-cover agents, detained last week over, plea bargains that would see them swiftly convicted of minor offences and sent back to Moscow. There has been much speculation in Moscow over the timing of the handover and about which other prisoners jailed for treason and espionage might be part of the swap.
Speaking from his home in Obninsk near Moscow, Sutyagin’s father, Vyacheslav, said: “We have no precise information. Igor may already have flown. At any rate, we expect him to go before the evening.
“It seems the deal needed to be done before a court hearing of the Russian agents arrested in the United States.”
He added: “I am sitting waiting for Igor to call from Vienna or London. I’m not sure if anyone will fly with him to Austria. None of us close relatives were able to go because our passports have expired.
“It’s my understanding that he will be met in Vienna by someone from the British side.”
The putative deal emerged on Wednesday when Sutyagin’s lawyer and relatives told the media that prison authorities had abruptly moved him from a sub-arctic penal colony to Lefortovo.
Russian and US officials who met him there said 10 Russians, some of them accused of spying for MI6 or the CIA, would be exchanged for 10 alleged agents captured earlier this month in the United States and accused of working for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).
The SVR had apparently instructed those 10 – of different nationalities but all but one of them believed to be Russian citizens – to go undercover in suburban America and then dig out details of US government policy.
An exchange would avoid protracted and potentially embarrassing trials for both countries. The alleged spies’ lack of success and the FBI’s weak case would come under close scrutiny.
Sutyagin’s lawyer, Anna Stavitskaya, said prison officials in Moscow had issued him a new passport in anticipation of his release.
“He was told that he would be pardoned and sent to Austria, and from there to England,” she said. The scientist was obliged to sign a document admitting his guilt to obtain release, she said.
Earlier, Sutyagin’s family said he maintained his innocence but agreed to the deal rather than face another four and half years in the “harsh regime” penal colony at Kholmogory near Arkhangelsk. His mother, Svetlana, said he was unshaven and gaunt when she saw him yesterday at Lefortovo.
The scientist told his mother he had learned of one other name on the list to be exchanged by Russia: Sergei Skripal, a military intelligence officer jailed in 2006 for giving information to MI6.
A Russian intelligence source told the Kommersant newspaper of two other proposed individuals: Alexander Zaporozhsky, an SVR operative sentenced to 18 years for espionage in 2003, and Alexander Sypachev, sent to jail for eight years in 2002 for working for the CIA. Sypachev’s lawyer said he would not agree to such a deal.
Stavitskaya said a Russian intelligence officer told Sutyagin that if only one of the proposed group to be sent abroad from Russia refused to co-operate then the whole deal could collapse.
– (Guardian service)