MOSCOW, June 5 (RIA Novosti) - Attorneys representing a Russian scientist found guilty of high treason said Monday they had appealed to the Presidium of Russia's Supreme Court against the ruling.
Igor Sutyagin, an arms researcher at the foreign politics department of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for passing classified information to Britain-based Alternative Futures Consulting, which Russia's security service said was front for U.S. intelligence.
"We are for the verdict to be overturned for the absence of crime in his [Sutyagin's] actions," Anna Stavitskaya said.
Under Russian law, sharing unclassified information cannot be considered a crime, the lawyer said.
"And the question of whether the information that Sutyagin passed to foreigners was classified had not been raised at trial," she added.
Sutyagin denies wrongdoing, asserting that he received the information from open sources - newspapers and journals.
Stavitskaya said the appeal also enumerated several violations of the European Convention on Human Rights made during the trial, since it began in November 2003.
The Moscow City court passed an espionage verdict on April 7, 2004, after Sutyagin was found guilty of treason by the unanimous decision of a 12-man jury, and denied commutation by a vote of 8 to 4. On August 17, the Supreme Court upheld the ruling, dismissing the defense lawyers' appeal.
