By IPS Correspondents
MOSCOW, Apr 2 1996 (IPS)

Environmentalist Alexander Nikitin appears before a military court in St Petersburg on Thursday for a preliminary closed hearing into treason charges, brought against him for his work investigating nuclear contamination of the Arctic.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), formerly the notorious KGB, allowed Nikitin access to his lawyer Yuri Schmidt only last Friday. The charges carry a possible prison sentence of 10 to 15 years up to the death penalty.

Nikitin was arrested on Feb. 6 on charges of treason brought under Article 64 of the Russian criminal code following his work with the Norwegian environmental group, the Bellona Foundation.

He was coauthor of a Bellona report published in November on the nuclear submarine base of Zapadnaya Litsa in the Arctic — part of a larger report on Arctic nuclear contamination which Bellona plans to publish during the Group of Seven richest nations (G-7) Nuclear Safety meeting in Moscow later this month.

President Boris Yeltsin’s recent visit to Norway was dominated by the case, during which the two countries agreed to cooperate on environmental matters relating to the Arctic.

Yeltsin agreed that Russia would drop its complaint against Bellona and would allow Nikitin a lawyer of his choice, following protest demonstrations during his trip to Oslo.

“We will drop our complaints against Bellona and the Norwegian side will not object to Nikitin being tried according to Russian laws with the lawyer of his choice,” he said. He made it clear that he would retain a personal interest in the case. “I am not a judge. “I am higher than a judge,” he joked.

But Bellona is still cautious. “We don’t know what will happen at the military hearing, says Thomas Nilsen of Bellona. We hope Nikitin will be released on bail pending the full court hearing, but this is not certain.” He has been held in isolation in Litaynli 4 jail since his arrest and was even deprived of the monthly family visits guaranteed under the Constitution until recently.

Nikitin, aged 43, who normally lives in St Petersburg with his wife, Tatyana, and two teenage daughters, is a retired naval captain. Originally from Ukraine, he graduated from the Naval High School for engineers in Sevastopol in 1974.

Until 1985 he was based at Zapadnaya Litsa with the Northern Fleet before being transferred to Moscow where he worked until 1992 in the Defence Ministry’s control agency for nuclear safety.

Since then he has been working as a car dealer in St Petersburg, after failing to find civilian work in the nuclear safety field. He has been doing occasional contract work with Bellona since 1994.

“He was arrested early on Feb. 6 by five security policemen at his apartment in St Petersburg,” says Bellona. The agents cut off his phone, sealed the apartment and detained Nikitin initially for what they said would be a three-hour interrogation. Later, they called to say he had been arrested for espionage.

The FSB saw the case as a way of reasserting its power. But Yeltsin cannot allow this to jeopardise relations with Norway which are becoming increasingly important.

Norway has already allocated funds to help with various kinds of environmental pollution in the Kola peninsula including funding modernisation of the giant Penchenga Nikel combine through a 214 million dollar loan and 42 million dollar grant.

At the end of his first official visit to Norway, Yeltsin agreed with Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland on further measures to reduce emissions from industrial centres in Kola.

The two leaders also agreed to set up a fund to clear up nuclear waste and to work together for global nuclear disarmament. Norway is also helping to mediate between Russia and NATO over NATO plans to incorporate former Soviet bloc states in central and eastern Europe.

Russia sees NATO’s eastward expansion as a threat to its security, but following his Oslo visit Yeltsin indicated that he would not object to countries joining NATO’s political structures provided they stayed out of its military wing. Norway is the only NATO state bordering Russia.

Russia’s border with Norway is its oldest; Moscow has been making treaties with Oslo since 1251. But the border issue is further complicated by the two’s long dispute over territorial control of the Barents Sea, between Norway and the Norwegian-owned island of Spitzbergen. It is the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet’s only way to the Atlantic out of its home port of Murmansk.

The sea is also thought to hold major oil and gas reserves and fish stocks. The lack of a concrete accord is letting third nations in to plunder fish stocks and holding up oil and gas exploration.

Last month’s Operation Battle Griffin ’96 manoeuvres and other recent Western exercises also revived concern in Moscow about Norway’s unilateral decision — with NATO’s encouragement — to relax self-imposed Cold War restrictions on NATO troop movements in the far northern province of Finnmark, which borders Russia.

Bellona first faced problems in Russia yet last October when security officers confiscated the files of the organisation in the northern city of Murmansk on suspicion that they contained secret data on the Northern fleet.

The files were sent for examination to the main headquarters of the Russian Navy where experts ruled that a considerable part of the files contained “materials belonging to the category of state secrets”. This provoked Nikitin’s arrest.

But Russian ecologists sided with Bellona saying the arrest was aimed at concealing data showing the extent of the pollution caused by the nuclear fleet in northern Russia.

The arrest was “a way of plugging leaks of information on the ecological situation in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk regions,” says Svyatoslav Zabelin, Chairman of the Russian Social-Ecological Union.

“The charges against Nikitin are groundless and aim to conceal information on military activities and the damage caused by them to the environment”, he stresses.

“Captain Nikitin is an innocent victim of a tyrannical regime seeking revenge against the Greens,” says Olga Razbash, an expert on environment protection legislation. “The Nikitin case crudely violates constitutional premises on human rights, adds Valentin Gefter of the environmental NGO the Memorial Society.

The European Parliament adopted a resolution in support of Nikitin on Feb. 15, which the Russian Foreign Ministry described as “interference”. The issue has also been raised in the Swedish parliament.

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