MOSCOW, January 5 (RIA Novosti) - The defense for Valentin Danilov, a Russian scientist sentenced for spying for China, filed a claim to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, a lawyer for the defense said Thursday.
"We have turned to the European Court to protect Danilov's rights," Anna Stavitskaya said. "The claim concerns the violation of four provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights."
On November 24, 2004, the Krasnoyarsk Regional Court sentenced thermal physicist Valentin Danilov to 14 years in prison after he had been found guilty on charges of high treason and fraud. In June 2005 the Supreme Court of Russia cut the prison term by one year.
Grigory Balykhin, the head of the Russian Federal Agency for Education, said about ten expert evaluations had been conducted during the hearings into the Danilov case. Balykhin said that the experts had ascertained that the information Dainlov had sent to China was classified, and added that "enormous damage" had been done to Russia's security.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) launched the criminal case against Danilov in May 2000. At that time Danilov was the head of the thermal physics center at Krasnoyarsk State Technical University. In February 2001, he was placed in a detention center but released on his own recognizance in September 2002. He was arrested again on November 10, 2004 in the court building on a warrant issued by the regional Prosecutor's Office.
This was the second time the physicist's case had been heard. A jury acquitted him on the first occasion, but the Supreme Court then overturned that ruling.
