RIGHTS: Russian Navy Journalist May Face Treason Charges Next Month

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Andrei Ivanov

MOSCOW, Jun 24 1998 (IPS) - Military journalist Captain Grigory Pasko, well known for his investigations into secret nuclear dumping as a reporter for the Russian Navy newspaper Boyevaya Vakhta (Combat Vigil), could face charges of high treason next month.

Pasko, 34, was arrested last November on his return from a trip to Japan and accused of possessing papers allegedly containing military secrets. Before he left for Japan, customs officials had confiscated documents he planned to give Japanese reporters.

After his arrest, the security services searched his apartment and confiscated documents assembled in the Far East, as well as cassettes, books and his computer.

Though Pasko’s trip to Japan reportedly had nothing to do with his environmental investigations, it is his exposes of nuclear dumping that have most angered officials. His articles for Boyevaya Vakhta a daily paper for sailors serving with the Russian Navy’s Pacific Fleet, and the Japanese daily Asaki, have drawn international attention to the Navy’s operations.

The Federal Security Service (FSB), successor to the feared Cold War KGB, has accused Pasko of jeopardising Russian defence capabilities by allegedly leaking sensitive information to the Japanese media.

He has been held in a pre-trial jail in Vladivostok during investigations into his case since May 11.

All through his 14-year career as a naval journalist he has annoyed and embarrassed the authorities. For the past few years his efforts have been focused on the problem of nuclear wastes produced by the ships of the Pacific fleet.

In the few months before his arrests he had also begun to look into the dumping of unwanted Soviet era chemical weapons in the Sea of Japan. His wife, Galina Morozova, believes he is “being punished for exposing environmental crime”. She says people in high places want to silence him.

She has been unable to see him since March when she published an article in a local newspaper saying Pasko was merely doing his job as a journalist. The FSB argues that his activities amounted to spying and had nothing to do with environmental concerns.

His team of defence lawyers, by contrast, say that after reading all the “secret” materials they found “absolutely nothing that could be considered a state secret.” Pressure is already being put on his lawyers. One of them, Karen, says he has received telephone calls warning him to drop the case.

At present his trial is due to be held in a Vladivostok military court in secret, unless his lawyers succeed in changing this. Psko’s team of defence lawyers will do their best to transfer their client’s case to the Military Collegium of Russia’s Supreme Court. Unbiased justice “is possible for him only in Moscow,” says a spokesman for the team.

Pasko has a lot of support in the Vladivostok area where concern about increasing radioactive contamination are growing. Russia’s Pacific Fleet of nuclear submarines produce vast quantities of dangerous spent fuel and other wastes for which there are no proper storage facilities.

The situation is as bad as, or even worse than, that in the north west Murmansk region which services the Northern Fleet. But it has had less publicity.

Sea dumping of lightly radioactive liquid wastes in the Pacific took place at five sites between 1966 and 1991. In terms of volume, most dumping took place south east of Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula but the most radioactive wastes were dumped in the Sea of Japan. Dumping reached a peak in 1986/7.

Renewed dumping of low-level liquid wastes into the Sea of Japan in October 1993 caused an international outcry with strong protests lodged by Japan and South Korea. A joint Russian-Japanese commission on liquid wastes was set up to try to find a solution to the problem.

Fresh fuel for the submarines arrives by rail to naval shipyards near Vladivostok for transport onwards by service ship to other bases. Used fuel is taken to a waste dump north of the Gornyak shipyard in Kamchatka and to a special installation (927-III) on Cape Maidelya near Vladivostok for temporary storage.

There its sits waiting for transfer by rail to Russia’s reprocessing facility, the Mayak Chemical Combine in the Urals. However, transfers of spent fuel have been erratic and infrequent.

Shipping to Mayak in new rail containers only restarted in July 1996, its specialists say it will take up to 10 years, depending on the level of financing, to completely remove the waste fuel from the coastal bases of Russia’s Pacific fleet.

The Pacific fleet now has some 8,400 spent fuel assemblies stored at coastal bases and on board ships but has no special long-term storage facility. Spent fuel is stored in Kamchatka, at a waste dump north of the Gornyak shipyard, and on Cape Maidelya. More waste is being held on board the small fleet of service ships that transport new and used fuel to and from submarines at the Zvezda repair yards near Vladivostok.

In addition some 57 obsolete submarines complete with fuel are moored at various sites along the Pacific coast pending decommissioning. In 1994, the Japanese government gave a 1.25 billion dollar grant to the Russian government to improve nuclear safety in the region.

The Pacific waste problem is of concern not just to local residents but also to most naval personnel. Pasko’s lawyers say work to publicise the dumping had the full support of the Pacific Fleet. He says Pasko was often alerted to incidents of covert dumping by his military superiors.

If found guilty of treason and espionage, Pasko faces 12 to 20 years in prison. Another of Pasko’s lawyers, Oleg Kotlyarov, is confident of his client’s acquittal. “The materials we read show no direct evidence of his guilt,” he said. “Charges are based on assumptions rather than facts.”

He claims that some of the charges are fabricated. Rights NGOs protesting his detention include Reporters Sans Frontiers, International Forum of Mass Media and Human Rights Watch.