Secret Police Try to Intimidate Enviro Whistleblower

by Andrei Ivanov and Judith Perera

Nikitin was arrested in February 1996 and jailed for more than 10 months pending investigation into his role in writing a report critical of the Russian Navy's Northern Fleet. Nikitin and others say the fleet's careless handling of nuclear waste imperils the region for hundreds of kilometers.

The FSB, successor to the feared Cold War KGB, says the report contained state secrets. Nikitin and his supporters with the Norwegian environmental group Bellona, which published the report, say it was based on public records.

Nikitin was released on a pledge that he would not leave St Petersburg before his trial. The first set of formal charges against Nikitin were not filed, however, until he had been in jail for seven months.

A sixth set of charges handed up last February, like the previous five, was based largely on a Russian defense ministry decree that is classified, and unknown to the general public. So far the FSB have failed to prove their case satisfactorily -- hence the repeated sets of charges.

Nikitin and his lawyers have not been permitted to see the decree he is accused of violating. Thomas Nilsen of Bellona says the FSB has found itself trapped, and has no idea what to do next.

Nikitin's principal lawyer, Yuri Schmidt, says he cannot imagine what legal grounds the new charges will be based upon. "There are no federal laws, which state that information gathered by Nikitin for the Bellona Northern Fleet report contains state secrets," he points out.

As a measure of their desperation, the FSB have started trying to intimidate Nikitin and his defence council. "There are some 10 of them, who are following me everywhere," says Nikitin.

"They are all dressed in black, wearing black glasses. Just like in a cheap detective story."

As he was driving his Lada along Nevsky Prospekt, he noticed a Zhiguli car following him with three men inside. To check he was being followed, he says he turned sharply into a narrow street and the Zhiguli came after him.

This did not bother him unduly, however, and when he arrived at the cafe he parked his car outside and went in. He left around 9.00 pm only to find that one of his tires was slashed.

The car which had been following him was parked on the other side of the road. When he got home he saw the same car parked outside his block of flats. At 10:00 pm Nikitin went for a walk with his wife -- taking his camera just in case.

Seeing the FSB car still parked outside, he took a few pictures of his wife standing in front of it. Immediately a man dressed in black leather go out of the car and demanded that the film should be exposed.

When Nikitin refused, he became violent but other people passing by managed to stop the fight. The man in black retreated and was then joined by two others who emerged from a side street.

That night Nikitin had to unplug his telephone. From 3:00 am there were constant phone calls from callers asking for people who never lived at the apartment. The next day the scenario was repeated but this time two tires were slashed. The three men in black were drinking beer on the other side of the street.

On May 3 one of Nikitin's defense lawyers, Ivan Pavlov, agreed to accompany him home and try to talk to the FSB agents. As they got near Nikitin's home at around 6:00 pm they saw the familiar Zhiguli parked in front of the flats.

Nikitin stopped his car and Pavlov got out. He went up to the Zhiguli and asked the three men inside who they were and why they were following Nikitin. They said he was mistaken.

Pavlov lives in the same type block of flats as Nikitin and had to walk 100 meters from the road to his entrance. At the door he was met by the three men who asked him for his identity card. They took it and threw it away without even looking at it and warned him to "stay out of this."

Nikitin and Schmidt went to the FSB investigator in charge of the case, Aleksandr Kolb, on May 5 and told him that an official complaint would be filed to the prosecutor of St. Petersburg.

"The persecution of Nikitin and his family is an attempt from FSB to force them to agree to a compromise -- to admit the charges and receive amnesty," says Schmidt. "The FSB is stuck with this embarrassing case and has no other way out, but to use their old tricks."