REVIEW TOPICS:
Criminal Cases Review Commission rejects Norwegian Cold War spying appeal
Is Ossetian human rights defender a South Ossetia KGB spy?
Human rights groups and lawyers worried that dissenting Russians will be jailed as spies
NKVD executioners in Katyn named by Memorial society
Protected persons in Belarus to acquire right of voluntary temporary refusal of state protection
Extension of shadowing scandal in Lithuania: State Security Department hit out by offended journalists
Criminal Cases Review Commission rejects Norwegian Cold War spying appeal
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| Arne Treholt |
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An appeal of Arne Treholt, a former Norwegian top diplomat who was convicted in 1985 for spying for the Soviet Union and Iraq during the Cold War was rejected yesterday by the Norwegian Criminal Cases Review Commission, news agencies are reporting.
Treholt who at that time was given a 20-year prison sentence for espionage failed to get a new hearing. His latest and probably final appeal was rejected in a 4-1 ruling by national commission after a lengthy investigation, news agency The Associated Press reports, referring to the commission chairwoman Janne Kristiansen. "It should not serve as a rubber stamp for authorities and courts," Treholt was quoted as saying by Norwegian news agency NTB.
The now 66-year-old Norwegian was a rising diplomat when he was arrested in January 1984 at Oslo's airport on his way to an alleged meeting with a Soviet KGB official in Vienna. At the time of his arrest he was a spokesman for the foreign ministry. Treholt has always denied the charges. He has, however, conceded that he met with a KGB officer and violated his civil servant's code of silence. Treholt has been seeking to clear his name since he was pardoned and released in 1992 on health reasons. The Supreme Court has twice refused to hear his appeal. After his release, Treholt has lived in Russia and also in Cyprus. A few years ago he published an autobiographical book, Grasoner (Grey Zones).
The independent commission was created in 2004 and can order a review if "new evidence or new circumstances" come to light or if a criminal offence was committed by investigators, prosecutors, defence lawyer or others, news agency DPA expands.
Arne Treholt is now a businessman based in Cyprus. Since 2004 he heads the FMC Securities; earlier he was the Managing Director, President of the RIM Investment Management (since 1998), Vice President of START group, Moscow (1995-1997). He was also President of Ismos Trading, Moscow 1993-1995. Treholt served for the state of Norway as a Counselor in Norwegian Mission to the UN (economic development) New York (1979-1983); Deputy Minister of Law of the Sea, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1976-1979); Political Secretary of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Shipping (1972-1976).
Is Ossetian human rights defender a South Ossetia KGB spy?
A trip to America of a self-described independent activist from South Ossetia, Lira Tskhovrebova, reflects the high-stakes campaign between Georgia and Russia, each eager to blame the other for their August war and to influence US policy as Barack Obama assumes the presidency, Rustavi 2 reports. Tskhovrebova is the founder of the Association of South Ossetian Women for Democracy and Human Rights.
The Associated Press is reporting that Georgian intelligence handed over to it secretly recorded conversations in which Tskhovrebova appears to discuss assignments, money and
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Lira Tskhovrebocva |
information with Vasily Guliyev, who the Georgians say is deputy director for counterintelligence for the South-Ossetian security agency. There’s no proof that Tskhovrebova had access to any secret information, but a number of wiretaps do show that Guliev was very interested in her frequent contact with Western organizations.
The news agency published a long article with video and audio proofs, which question the mission of Tskhovrebova, who arrived in Washington to challenge the strong US support for Georgia in its war with Russia over the breakaway region and describe atrocities by Georgian troops.
Is it possible that this self-proclaimed women’s activist of 12 years has been spying for her country, and perhaps even reporting back to her handlers on discussions with American officials? Lira Tskhovrebova ridicules the idea and says she is the victim of a smear campaign. But American officials have become wary of her — questioning who paid for her Washington tour, Rustavi 2 notes.
Georgia's Interior Minister, Vano Merabishvili, told the AP yesterday that Tskhovrebova was spying for Russia's security services. During a television interview with the AP, Tskhovrebova acknowledged that she routinely speaks and meets with Guliyev, a family friend; she knew Guliev works for the KGB but denied working for the KGB herself.
Human rights groups and lawyers worried that dissenting Russians will be jailed as spies
Anyone whose actions are directed against Russia's security, "including its constitutional regime, sovereignty, and territorial and state integrity," will be declared traitors and spies, Moscow-based newspaper Gazeta cites the new provision that is part of the government's amendments to the Criminal Code submitted to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.
AIA already wrote that the bill would change the norms of the current Criminal Code, which interprets treason as "hostile actions" hazardous to Russia's "external security."
Human rights groups and lawyers say anyone who dares to criticize the authorities could be declared a spy, just as under Joseph Stalin.
The authorities say the current clauses on treason and espionage complicate the investigation work of the Federal Security Service (FSB).
"Anyone who has talked to a foreigner could be declared a traitor," Boris Nadezhdin, head of the law department at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, said. He has signed an open letter from a new opposition party, The Right Cause, to the regional legislatures to blackball the constitutional amendments that prolong the presidential powers to six years. He also told the BBC about the letter.
"Had the bill been effective then, I would have been arrested for treason, because I first signed an anti-constitutional letter and then discussed the issue with a foreign organization," Nadezhdin said.
Gazeta cites Lev Levinson, a researcher at Russia's Human Rights Institute, who said that since the government was ready to interpret "any actions directed against the constitutional regime" as treason, its goal was "to restore the Stalinist norm when anti-Sovietism was a criminal offense."
NKVD executioners in Katyn named by Memorial society
The list of names of Soviet secret agents responsible for murdering thousands of Polish officers in 1940 has been discovered by the Russian Memorial Society, investigating the Katyn massacre, Polsih radio reports. The man in charge of the mass murder is thought to be
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| Tragedy revealed in Krakow paper |
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personally responsible for the death of 50,000 people over a long and bloody career.
Researcher Nikita Petrov has got hold of a list of officers of the NKVD, a forerunner to the KGB, who participated in the Katyn massacre, where up to 22,000 Polish officers were murdered in prison camps and forests in Russia. The head executioner turns out to be the then 45-year-old Vasilij Blochin. Making his first kill of Russian dissidents in 1927 he went on to execute people regularly for the next 29 years, causing the death of an estimated 50,000, according to Polish Radio. Records indicate that Blochin was especially trusted by Stalin, who used him to eliminate many of his enemies, real and imagined. The Katyn massacre was among the executioner’s special tasks for which he received considerable reward once Stalin signed their fate in the spring of 1940.
Researcher Nikita Petrov claims that the Soviet secret police rewarded not only high ranking officers involved in the murders, but also drivers, typists and ordinary soldiers. Petrov of the Memorial Society is trying to establish and reveal the names of all Katyn executioners who are still being protected against war crime trials by the Russian authorities, Polish Radio marks.
The Soviets initially claimed that that the Nazi soldiers were responsible for the Katyn massacre. But after an investigation in the 1990s, Moscow admitted that it was in fact the NKVD who were responsible but have since refused, both, to label the massacre as ‘genocide’, or carry out prosecutions against those still alive who took part, radio notes.
Extension of shadowing scandal in Lithuania: State Security Department hit out by offended journalists
Lithuanian mass media continue to cover and make comments on the scandal around "preventive" conversations of the Lithuanian State Security Department (VSD) officers with local politologists. One of them is Kestutis Girnius, the former head of Lithuanian Service of the Radio Free Europe, nowadays the senior lecturer of the International relations and political sciences college of Vilnius University, who made a public announcement on attempts of the VSD to intimidate him and to force to refuse critical assessment of actions of the President, the Constitutional Court and, in particular, foreign policy of Lithuania. AIA already reported that Girnius had accused the State Security Department of planting KGB methods, in shadowing the citizens and „attempts to supervise thoughts”. Girnius called to find out whether the VSD had "black lists” of journalists and in what scale and on what basis shadowing of citizens was conducted, as well as which judges give out permits to shadowing.
Girnius published a regular article in news portal Alfa.lt (VSD, the Biggest Enemy of VSD) in which he mentioned facts of inadmissible behaviour of the VSD officers during last years - in particular, the slanderous campaign of their own high-ranking colleague who died under unknown circumstances, refusal of the VSD to obey the parliament and give information prepared by the victim who was, in fact, expelled from the VSD leadership and sent to Belarus where he fell out from the ninth floor of a hotel. At last, the facts of privatization by the VSD heads of apartments for undercharge and attempts to force to break off the journalists writing on this topic.
The former chairman of Constitutional Court, Egidijus Kurys, wrote an article in magazine Veidas to defend the VSD: the author stressed that the VSD had the right to warn citizens about interest of special services of other states, for what citizens have to be „grateful".
Protected persons in Belarus to acquire right of voluntary temporary refusal of state protection
In Belarus protected persons will acquire the right of voluntary temporary refusal of state protection, news agency BELTA reports, referring to the chief of the Security Service of the President of Belarus, Andrei Vtyurin, who represented in the House of Representatives the new bill On the State Protection. Members of parliament approved the bill in the first reading, news agency notes.
According to Vtyurin, the above mentioned norm is stipulated in the Belarus legislation for the first time. Thus the protected persons should concern to own safety responsibly. Necessity of introduction of the norm means that in practice of the service there are cases when the protected person declares that for a certain time he does not need protection, for example, during holidays abroad.
By approach of such circumstances the Security Service at own risk should execute requirements of the protected person, having stopped his protection, however continues to bear the legal
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Andrei Vtyurin |
responsibility for maintenance of his safety. It is supposed that the President will certain the order and the maximal terms of temporary refusal of state protection, and also the right is given to the chief of the State Protection Service to decide on the temporary termination of state protection, according to Trend News. The practice of temporary refusal of state protection has been already used in such countries as Russia, Ukraine and the United States.
The chief of the Security Service of the President of Belarus, Andrei Vtyurin, noted that the main principles of work of the service are forecasting, revealing and prevention, that means, suppression of terrorist aspirations on initial stage, television and radio company Mir reports. It cites Vtyurin who marked that „a criminal should not be allowed into the area of carrying out of an undertaking. It is necessary to infringe on him in different ways, including use of force”.
The bill keeps the structure of the already existing law On the State Protection and corresponds to the structure of the CIS modal law on state protection. Two assignments of the head of state are realized in the document. The first, concerning precise fastening of the status of a state security agency, i.e. the Security Service of the President. It is supposed that the security service is the special representative the state body which carries out the state protection within the limits of competence and directly provides activity of the President of Belarus and is submitted to him. The body of the state protection is included into the system of maintenance of national security of Belarus and is the state body in which the military service is stipulated.
The second assignment concerns the order of application of weapons and physical force, special means and equipment by employees of other state bodies involved by security service to provide safety of the protected persons and facilities. In particular, it is fixed in the draft that employees of the state bodies and other organizations apply physical force and special means only according to the law On the State Protection, with the restrictions established by the state protection body. Also new definitions of the most important concepts of this sphere are offered and concretized, such as the state protection, protected object, security zone, etc. In addition as main principles of realization of state protection are provided principles of priority of precautionary measures and rational actions. The latter in addition guarantees the right of citizens to the affable and polite reference from the State Protection Service employees.
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