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Grigory Pasko is a poet, journalist, and officer of the Russian Navy whose reporting on the country's illegal practice of dumping nuclear waste in the sea led to charges of espionage. Prior to his arrest, Pasko often reported on the neglect of Russia's navy and its practice of disposing radioactive waste in the sea for the Pacific Fleet's newspaper Boyevaya Vakhta, based in Vladivostok. Part of his research required frequent trips to Japan, where, with the consent of the military, he also contributed to newspapers including the Japanese Asahi Shimbun and NHK television news channel. In 1993 he produced a film entitled Extra-Dangerous Zone, which documented a Russian navy tanker dumping nuclear waste in the Sea of Japan; it aired on Japanese television and on a station in the Russian Far East.
Case history:
Pasko was returning from a trip to Japan when he was arrested on November
20, 1997 at Vladivostok airport by the Federal Security Services (FSB).
Soon thereafter, his home was searched and his car, research materials,
fax, and computer were confiscated for inspection by the Eighth Department
of the Ministry of Defense General Staff. Pasko was charged with espionage,
specifically for "attempting to leave Russia carrying state secrets with
the intention of handing them to a Japanese national," and "possession of
state secrets at home with the aim of later passing them abroad." He was
held in solitary confinement leading up to the trial and throughout the
majority of the proceedings. The trial began on January 21, 1999, and
even though the FSB acknowledged that none of the documents in his
possession were classified, the Ministry determined that the entire
body of work he compiled amounted to a threat to national security.
Pasko's defense claimed that the materials he utilized were publicly
available and that he had worked openly for the Japanese media.
Furthermore, Article Seven of the Russian Federal Law on State Secrets,
adopted in 1993, stipulates that information on the environment or on
conditions that endanger human life and health is immune to classification
as "state secrets." Pasko's lawyers claimed that they were inhibited from
constructing a proper defense once the case was classified.
Pasko stood trial in military court in Vladivostok. After many delays, on July 20, 1999, the court dismissed espionage charges against him but found him guilty of improper military conduct and sentenced him to three years in prison. He was released under an amnesty since he had already served nearly two-thirds of his sentence.
Hoping to have the improper conduct verdict overturned, Pasko appealed to the Russian Supreme Court the following year. Military prosecutors countered by appealing Pasko's acquittal on treason charges, and on November 21, 2000 the Supreme Court accepted the military prosecutor's appeal and Pasko was once again summoned to court.
Pasko's second trial began in March 2001, although a series of delays meant the trial did not start in earnest until July of that year. While dismissing nine of the 10 counts of espionage against Pasko, the court convicted him on one count of possessing classified information. The court concluded that notes he had taken while covering a meeting of the Pacific Fleet in September 1997 that were found in his flat when arrested two months later did contain classified information, although no evidence was presented that he intended to disclose this information in his own reporting or to foreign news agencies.
On December 25, 2001 the court sentenced Pasko to four years in prison, though that sentence was reduced to two years and four months to take account of the 20 months he served from the date of his arrest to the date of his acquittal. In February 2002, the Supreme Court invalidated the basis of Pasko's conviction by striking down its two supporting decrees. On February 12 the Court ruled the 1996 military secrecy order unconstitutional, and on February 13 it struck down the edict that barred servicemen with access to classified information from unapproved contact with foreigners.
Pasko appealed the sentence to the Supreme Court's military division in Moscow. On June 25, 2002, the Court upheld the original verdict of treason, but did make some changes to the wording, which removed reference to Pasko having illegally attended the meeting of the Pacific Fleet, as well as to having maintained contact with foreigners. However, this had no impact on the sentence itself.
Current status:
Pasko remains in prison in Vladivostok, where he is he is preparing to
edit a journal on ecology and law. His legal team intends to appeal against the
June 25 decision to higher bodies.
Grigory Pasko is a member of the Russian PEN Center, which contributed
a lawyer to his defense team, and is a member of the Russian Writers Union.
He is also an Honorary Member of the Canadian, Finland, German, Netherlands,
and USA West PEN Centers. In 1999 he was a recipient of a PEN Center USA
West Freedom to Write Award.
PEN considers Grigory Pasko to be detained solely for having disclosed
the Russian Pacific Fleet's poor and dangerous environmental practices.
It considers his conviction to be a gross contravention of the right to
freedom of expression and calls on the Russian authorities to order Grigory
Pasko's immediate release and to halt further judicial proceedings.