Russia denies drugs in spy suspect interrogation
11:12 25/11/2010
MOSCOW, November 25 (RIA Novosti) - A Russian Security Service official has dismissed claims that psychotropic drugs were used to interrogate a man later convicted of spying on Russia.
Igor Sutyagin, one of four Russians exchanged as part of a Russian-U.S. spy swap in early July, claimed he was given the drugs dissolved in cognac when he was being interrogated in Moscow's Lefortovo pre-trial detention. He said the treatment had given him memory blanks.
"The statements...are a complete fabrication," the official said on Thursday, adding that it was no coincidence that Sutyagin had chosen to start his "PR campaign" just as the scandal was beginning to die down.
A former disarmament researcher, Sutyagin currently lives in Britain. He was sentenced in 2004 in Russia to 15 years in prison for passing information to a British company linked to the CIA. He pleaded innocent to the charges.
Under the spy exchange deal, signed on July 9 in Vienna, Russia pardoned and released four prisoners jailed for spying for the United States in exchange for 10 people accused by the United States of spying for Russia.
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