Aleksandr Nikitin (environmentalist)

In 1996 he was accused of espionage for revealing the perils of decaying nuclear submarines,[1] and in 2000 he became the first Russian to be completely acquitted of a charge of treason in the Soviet or post-Soviet era.

[3] After having spent ten months in pre-trial detention in Saint Petersburg he was released on the order of Mikhail Katushev, the then deputy Russian Prosecutor General, in December 1996.

Nikitin was defended by a group of attorneys in law, including Yury Schmidt, Ivan Pavlov, Victor Drozdov, Henri Reznik and others.

On 30 May 2000 the Prosecutor General requested the governing body of the Russian Supreme Court, the Presidium, to re-open the case.

He is the head of Bellona Foundation’s Saint Petersburg branch, and is engaged in environmental and nuclear safety projects, as well as in human rights cases.