As soon as the prosecutors addressed the jury, it became clear that material having nothing to do with the case (for example, charges already dropped during investigation) or claims that are not supported by any available evidence were part of their presentation. The defense, which had anticipated this, tried to exclude this material and have the court declare invalid any claims from the indictment during preliminary hearings in September. Judge Shtunder, however, decided to leave it all in on the prosecutor´s assurance that none of the material that is not directly relevant to the actual charges would be read in front of the jury. When the prosecutors reneged on their own promise, Judge Shtunder immediately called off the hearings, and announced that they will resume on Nov. 5th.
For further details, see previous entries on the Sutyagin case below.
Human Rights Watch prepared a brief considering the Sutyagin case in the context of other recent “espionage cases” in Russia:
http://hrw.org/backgrounder/eca/russia/index.htm
