A Russian court convicted a Siberian scientist of spying at a retrial on Friday, overturning his earlier acquittal that had sparked the anger of the FSB state security forces. Physicist Valentin Danilov, who was accused of selling state secrets to China, denounced the outcome as "political" and said he would appeal, once sentence had been passed.
Danilov, speaking by telephone from his home in Krasnoyarsk, confirmed a jury court had quashed his earlier acquittal and unanimously found him guilty of passing on secrets to China and misusing university funds allocated for research.
He alleged the jury had been told what verdict to reach.
"I consider this trial to be political because there is no question of a criminal act here. I have been convicted on the basis of documents that are published. The Chinese could go to a library to read them or even buy them," he told Reuters.
The Danilov case has attracted attention because it touches on the effectiveness of juries in Russia - still a novelty for the post-Soviet judicial system - and the growing influence under President Vladimir Putin of the state security forces.
Under Putin, himself a former KGB spy, the budgets for state security and the military have grown and officials with a security background have been appointed to many key posts.
Danilov, 53, was charged with spying in 1999 after he tried to sell his invention - a tool designed to examine ways to destroy redundant satellites - to a Chinese company.
But the court in Krasnoyarsk acquitted him in December 2003, sparking outrage among prosecutors and officials from the FSB security service, who said members of the jury were unqualified to consider spying charges.
The Supreme Court subsequently ordered a retrial with a new set of judges and a new jury after the prosecutor's office argued the jury had been under strong psychological pressure from the defence team.
Danilov said: "There can either be a criminal trial or a political one. I do not know of a third alternative. There is no question of a criminal act here. At the first trial the verdict was 8-4 and was a correct one. Now the jury finds 12-0 that the charges against me are proved."
Asked whether he believed pressure had been brought to bear on the jury, he said: "I would not say pressure. I would say direction had been given."
He was pessimistic about the chances of his appeal succeeding. "I will appeal, but the chances of the Supreme Court changing the verdict are slim. I am a realist about this."
Itar-Tass news agency said he would be sentenced on November 10.
Jury trials, scrapped after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, were reinstated in post-Soviet Russia only in 2002 for serious crimes.
Danilov's lawyer, Valentina Yevmenova, said insufficient evidence had been presented to the jury to support the charges.
"They (the jury) worked with the information they were provided with, but this was limited," she told Ekho Moskvy radio. "So what the jury found him guilty of is not really clear to me."
Last April another scientist, Igor Sutyagin, was jailed for 15 years after being convicted of spying for the West in a case condemned by Russian human rights campaigners.
They said the Sutyagin case reflected the government's desire to discourage unauthorised contacts between Russiabn scientists and the west - a trend which, they say, has become stronger under Putin.