Space "Secrets" -Russia jails scientist for spying

How many space "secrets" are made public on this forum ?

Russia jails scientist for spying
A Russian physicist convicted of spying for China has been jailed for 14 years by a court in Siberia.

Valentin Danilov was cleared in 2003 of passing space secrets to China, but the result was later overturned.

Mr Danilov, 53, has always maintained that information he sold to China was already publicly available.

He is one of several Russian academics and journalists prosecuted by the internal security services, the FSB, on espionage charges.

Mr Danilov, a professor at Krasnoyarsk Technical University in Siberia, was first arrested in 2001.

He spent 19 months in prison before being cleared of charges in December 2003, but the verdict was overturned on appeal in December 2003.

A retrial in Krasnoyarsk returned a guilty verdict at the beginning of November.

Mr Danilov was sentenced by a judge in Krasnoyarsk and ordered to serve his sentence in a maximum security labour camp.

Appeal plans

Charges against Mr Danilov centred on alleged attempts to sell technology to China based on his work on the effects of the space environment on man-made satellites.

Russian authorities claimed his invention, a tool designed to examine ways to destroy redundant satellites, revealed state secrets.

He was charged with high treason and also accused of misappropriating funds from the university where he worked.

The case is the latest in a series of high-profile arrests and convictions of alleged spies.

Human rights groups have voiced concerns that the increase in convictions marks a return to Soviet-style scare tactics, correspondents say.

Mr Danilov's lawyer, Yelena Yevmenova, said she planned to launch an appeal against the sentence in the Russian Supreme Court, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

The Supreme Court previously upheld the Krasnoyarsk prosecutor's appeal against the original guilty verdict, ordering Mr Danilov to stand trial a second time.

In an interview with the BBC before being found guilty, Mr Danilov claimed his arrest set a dangerous precedent.

"I did no damage to this country. I am a scientist. I have no links at all to weapons development programmes, or anything sensitive covered by the law on state secrets. I don't know why they are being so stubborn," he said.

"If I can be found guilty of spying, then they could take any physicist here and make a case against him very easily."

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4037839.stm

I don't understand that at all. Why would they do such a thing?

Because Danilov is probably a right dodgy operator.

A couple of years back I was involved with an EU project to set a test laboratory up just outside Krasnojarsk to test satellites prior to shipment to balkanor and I briefly met a Professor from Krasnojarsk university (he had a very similar name so it's possible that it's the same man although I cant be sure). Anyway this professor was also trying to sell some devices that he or his group had invented to the west (sounds familiar eh?).

At the time I was working for DERA (which was owned and run by the UK MoD) and dealing with the Russian space community (owned and run by the Russian MoD) was nearly stopped due to the involvement with this professor. Thankfully I had very little dealings with him but others who worked on the project had to undergo extended security debriefs concerning his involvement with the project.

If the jailed Professor is the same man then I'm not surprised that the Russian authorities have finally caught up with him, if he isn't and he was operating in a similar manner to the one I knew then he probably has been doing something he shouldn't have.

The numerous security issues that arose during the project were difficult enough to work around without some idiot trying to make a quick buck.

from the article:


If the information was already publicly available, why would the Chinese gov't. pay for it? Somehow I doubt that they'd be that stupid. Either way, his defense is "I'm not a spy, I'm a con!" Which suggests he's definitely guilty of SOMETHING.

In some places it's tough making a living as a scientist. Perhaps he was just trying to make ends meet. The state, recognizing that this was maybe the tip of an iceberg they could not keep under wraps, had to do something in order to maintain the outward appearance of a strong internal security. His arrest was a politic measure.

DKH