Moscow

A Russian physicist has been sentenced to 14 years in prison after a retrial found him guilty of passing classified information to China. The verdict has been derided by scientists and human-rights observers.

Valentin Danilov admitted selling aerospace technology to a Chinese company in 1999, when he was head of the Institute of Thermodynamics at Krasnoyarsk State Technical University in Siberia.

In 2001, he was arrested by the Federal Security Service (FSB), who said his device to measure the effects of electromagnetic waves on satellites could help China to develop weapons that might threaten Russia.

But Danilov, with the public backing of prominent members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, countered that the technology was declassified in 1992 and that details of it had, in fact, been published in scientific journals. At least one of these publications is still openly available today.

The FSB has accused several scientists and environmentalists of espionage in recent years — something that human-rights groups refer to as “spy mania”. But last year, in a startling setback for the agency, a jury sided with Danilov and acquitted him of all charges.

Prosecutors successfully appealed the verdict on procedural grounds and won a second trial. During this one, jurors were permitted to decide only whether Danilov had provided the information, and not whether it constituted spying. That decision was left to Judge Andrei Afanasyev of the Krasnoyarsk Regional Court, who ruled that the data were indeed secret.

The 24 November verdict was questioned by Eduard Kruglyakov, deputy head of the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk, who said that the judge had refused to consider written testimony from Russian physicists in relevant subdisciplines.

Afanasyev also found Danilov guilty of embezzling 466,000 rubles ($16,500) — the first payment by the Chinese company. During the retrial he unexpectedly jailed Danilov, who had been free, after prosecutors accused the physicist of “criminal activity” for giving an interview to a US newspaper, the Los Angeles Times.

Danilov's lawyer, Yelena Yevmenova, says she will appeal the sentence in the Russian Supreme Court, as well as the European Court of Human Rights.