Russian physicist Valentin Danilov signs an agreement with the Chinese.
Photo: www.hro.org
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Acquittal of Physicist Valentin Danilov Overturned
June 10, The Federal Security Service accuses Danilov, a former professor at Krasnoyarsk State Technical University, of selling classified information about space technology to China while working on a contract between the university and China's Export and Import Company of Precise Machine Building.
Danilov was arrested in 2001. After a four-year investigation and trial, the jury acquitted Danilov in December. On Wednesday the Supreme Court overturned the acquittal and ordered a retrial under a new judge in the Krasnoyarsk regional court. The trial may begin in August or September and will again be by jury, although with new jurors, said Danilov's lawyer, Elena Evmenova, who also attended Wednesday's hearing.
Danilov and Yevmenova said they had anticipated Wednesday's ruling because the Supreme Court had been unusually quick in its handling of the prosecutors' appeal and also because the FSB's Krasnoyarsk branch had sent a cameraman and representatives to cover the hearing.
"They knew the result," Danilov said of the FSB.
Danilov dismissed the case against him as a waste of state money and said he was counting on being acquitted again. "Why should I doubt that?" he said. "The people who will hand down the verdict will be guided by their conscience." Investigators and prosecutors "have been wasting state funds and wearing on the nerves of my relatives and myself for all of these four years," he said. "This issue isn't worth peanuts."
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