List of convicted spies Russia may offer for exchange in spy swap with US
By APThursday, July 8, 2010
Russia’s list for spy swap with US
Convicts whom Russia released in a spy swap:
— Alexander Zaporozhsky, a former colonel in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, sentenced in 2003 to 18 years in prison for espionage on behalf of the United States. Zaporozhsky quit the service in 1997 and settled in the United States; Russia enticed him back and arrested him in 2001. He was convicted on charges of passing secret information about Russian agents working under cover in the United States and about American sources working for Russian intelligence.
— Sergei Skripal, a former colonel in the Russian military intelligence, was found guilty of passing state secrets to Britain and sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2006. He was accused of revealing the names of several dozen Russian agents working in Europe.
— Igor Sutyagin, a military analyst with the U.S.A. and Canada Institute, a respected Moscow-based think-tank, was sentenced to 15 years in 2004 on charges of passing information on nuclear submarines and other weapons to a British company that Russia claimed was a CIA cover. Sutyagin has insisted on his innocence, saying the information he provided was available from open sources.
—Gennady Vasilenko. Vasilenko, a former KGB officer employed as a security officer by Russia’s NTV television was arrested in 2005. In 2006 he was sentenced to three years in prison on murky charges of illegal weapons possession and resistance to authorities. Reasons for his involvement in the swap weren’t immediately clear.
