Journalist charged

(HRW/IFEX) – According to information released by HRW on 21 May 1998, the Federal Security Service (FSB) is pressing espionage charges against military journalist Grigory Pasko, who was arrested on 20 November 1997. HRW is concerned that the charges against Pasko may be connected to his environmental activities and thus may violate article 19(2) of […]

(HRW/IFEX) – According to information released by HRW on 21 May 1998, the
Federal Security Service (FSB) is pressing espionage charges against
military journalist Grigory
Pasko, who was arrested on 20 November 1997. HRW is concerned that the
charges against Pasko may be connected to his environmental activities and
thus may violate article 19(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR) which states that “everyone shall have the right to
freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom of seek, receive and
impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either
orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other
media of his choice.”

**This alert contains information further to IFEX alert of 11 May 1998**
Pasko, a military officer of the Russian Pacific Fleet, worked as a
correspondent for “Boevaya Vakhta”, the fleet’s newspaper. Pasko also did
freelance work, apparently with permission from his newspaper, for such
Japanese media outlets as NHK television station. Pasko traveled to Japan
several times researching various issues, most recently that of Russian
soldiers who were killed and buried in Japan. During these visits, a
Japanese friend and journalist, who asked HRW not to mention his name,
helped him with logistics and contacts. On 13 November 1997, while Pasko was
carrying some materials about the Russian Far East, which he had gathered
for this friend, customs officials at Vladivostok airport confiscated the
documents.

On 20 November 1997, upon returning from Japan, FSB agents arrested Pasko.
That same night they carried out a house search at his apartment and
confiscated all his notes, videotapes, books, computers, fax machine and
other materials. Several days later, the FSB presented Pasko with espionage
charges under article 275 of the criminal code. The FSB has classified the
charges against the journalist as state secret, but to the best of HRW’s
understanding, they consist of two parts: 1) attempting to leave Russia
carrying several state secret documents that he intended to hand over to his
Japanese friend and
colleague; and 2) possession of state secret documents at home, with a view
to possibly handing them over to foreign organisations or individuals. Pasko
refuses to give any testimony until he is released from pretrial detention.

Among the materials confiscated was a document concerning the participation
of North Korean workers in the agricultural industry of the Primorsky
Territory which the local department for agriculture gave Pasko; documents
concerning the level of readiness of factories in the city Komsomolsk na
Amure to process radioactive materials from
nuclear submarines which the Committee on Labor Unions on Ship Construction
provided Pasko; and a document on army and fleet reforms. In addition, Pasko
carried some press clippings from Boevaya Vakhta.

After the journalist’s arrest, the FSB sent the confiscated documents to the
Eighth Department of the Ministry of Defense General Staff for an expert
assessment on their secrecy status. According to Pasko’s lawyers, the Eighth
Department’s experts concluded that all documents confiscated at Vladivostok
airport taken individually do not contain state secrets but taken together
they do. HRW believes that such reasoning is inconceivable in a country that
seeks to be governed by the rule of law. HRW therefore believes that these
documents must be considered not to contain state secrets, and that Pasko
did not violate Russian law when trying to take them to Japan.

The Ministry of Defense also carried out an expert assessment of the
materials that were confiscated from Pasko’s apartment. While the
conclusions of the assessment have been classified as secret, one of Pasko’s
lawyers told HRW that the experts found several of these documents to
contain state secrets. However, according to the lawyers, many of these
documents were already part of the public domain, and Pasko himself used
many of them in articles for “Boevaya Vakhta.” Many of the documents
contained information that had already been published in books and journals,
such as the journal of the
environmental organization Greenpeace and A.S. Pavlov’s detailed book on the
Russian fleet (Spravochnik Voenno-Morskogo Flota SSSR I Rossii).

HRW believes that any information that has already appeared in the public
domain can no longer be treated as state secret.

HRW is further concerned that the expert assessments performed by the Eighth
Department of the Ministry of Defense General Staff lacks objectivity. In
another FSB- initiated case, that against environmentalist Aleksandr
Nikitin, the Ministry’s experts twice based their conclusions on secret
Ministry of Defense decrees, disregarding
the fact that the Russian constitution clearly states that unpublished
normative acts cannot be used to restrict the rights and freedoms of
citizens. Furthermore, the experts refused to compare Nikitin’s written
work, which he had prepared for the Norwegian environmental organization
Bellona, to information already available in the public
domain, which would have verified Nikitin’s claims that all information in
the report had previously been published.

HRW is further concerned that the FSB continuously presents Pasko’s patently
legal activities as a journalist as evidence of his alleged espionage.
According to the FSB’s press statements, the fact that Pasko gathered and
imparted information and received money for this from foreign organizations
proves that he worked as a spy. However, it is
part of Pasko’s job as a journalist to gather information and pass it on to
others. Russia’s Law on the Mass Media explicitly states in article 47 that:
“A journalist has the right to: seek, request, receive and circulate
information…” It goes without saying that a
professional journalist receives financial gratification for his work. Pasko
further maintains that he always received all the information he used for
his work through official channels and asked permission for it from his
newspaper. Several written permission letters from “Boevaya Vakhta ‘, which
the defense has added to the materials of the case, confirm this.

Even if some of the materials that Pasko kept at his apartment do contain
state secrets, the FSB must present evidence that Pasko intended to assist
“a foreign government, foreign organization or their representatives” and to
carry out “hostile activities damaging the external security of the Russian
Federation.” The fact that Pasko did freelance work for Japanese media
outlets is by no means evidence of such an intention. It is further puzzling
why, if the FSB found that Pasko spied for a Japanese media outlet, no steps
have been taken with respect to these media outlets or their other
representatives in Russia.

HRW is also concerned that the FSB abuses the secret status of the case
against Pasko to repel public scrutiny of its criminal investigation.
Pasko’s lawyers are unable to inform the public about any details of the
case as they fear the FSB will deny their further participation in the case.
The FSB has already stripped Pasko’s wife of her right to visit her husband.
It claims that she “disclosed secrets of the investigation” because she told
journalists that some of the documents confiscated from Pasko at the airport
had
already been published in the press.

Having effectively silenced Pasko’s lawyers and his wife, the FSB is now
apparently seeking to depict Pasko in the press as a well-established spy
who received monthly allowances for his alleged acts of treason. However,
these statements are at best grossly
premature and not supported by solid evidence. Based on HRW’s observations
of the FSB’s conduct in the case against Aleksandr Nikitin, the organisation
believes the FSB purposefully spreads selective, speculative and suggestive
information to influence public opinion and raise its own image. These
statements violate the notion of the presumption of innocence.

While the FSB’s exact motives for prosecuting Pasko remain unknown, HRW
believes there is sound reason to believe that the case against the
journalist is connected to his publications on environmental issues, and in
particular those on dangers of nuclear installations and waste. In 1993,
Pasko produced a documentary film about the Russian
government’s dumping of nuclear waste in the Sea of Japan. That same year,
NHK broadcast the film, which shocked the Japanese public. After the NHK
broadcast, the FSB questioned Pasko several times. According to his wife,
Pasko wrote a total of about thirty articles on nuclear installations and
the environment over the last few years and
was harassed by the FSB on several occasions because of these publications.

Environmental activism in the field of nuclear safety in Russia has come
under pressure over the last few years. It should further be noted that
since the introduction of amendments to the Law on State Secrets in October
1997, any information on nuclear installations is classified as state
secret.

HRW believes that the Russian authorities do not have sufficient evidence of
any criminal activities by Pasko to keep him in detention. This is
especially true considering that the reason for the arrest suspicion that
Pasko tried to leave Russia with documents
containing state secrets disappeared when it was established that none of
the documents that were confiscated from the journalist at Vladivostok
airport contain any state secrets.

Recommended Action

Mr. Yu. Skuratov

Procurator General

Kuznetskii most, 13

103760 Moscow K-31

By FAX:  292-8898