Georgia is granting an early release to a Russian citizen serving a seven-year prison sentence for his part in an attempt to sell highly enriched uranium to undercover Georgian agents, a senior Interior Ministry official in Tbilisi told EurasiaNet.org.
Oleg Khintsagov, a resident of North Ossetia, was arrested in 2006 after attempting to sell 100 grams of highly enriched uranium (HEU) to a Georgian Interior Ministry officer posing as a representative of a terrorist organization. Khintsagov received a five-year prison term for trying to bring HEU into Georgia, and a two-year sentence for smuggling.
Shota Utiashvili, head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Information and Analysis Department, said that a presidential pardon for smuggling convictions would reduce Khintsagov’s sentence by two years. He is scheduled for release in January. Utiashvili did not specify the date of the pardon.
At the time of Khintsagov’s arrest, the Georgian government used the case to highlight alleged security risks posed by the breakaway territory of South Ossetia, which borders on the Russian Federation’s North Ossetia. Khintsagov, however, did not cross into Georgia via South Ossetia. [For details, see the EurasiaNet.org archive.]
The government has not addressed publicly any potential security risks associated with Khintsagov’s early release. Utiashvili, though, described his release as worrisome. “This obviously causes us concern,” Utiashvili said. The ministry can do nothing to stop Khintsagov’s release, he added. “He was arrested and charged. After serving his sentence, he is free,” Utiashvili said.
Presidential administration representatives did not respond to requests from EurasiaNet.org to discuss Khintsagov’s case. Nor could they provide the date of the pardon. The Office of the Public Defender and non-governmental organizations specializing in human rights and prisoner rights did not respond to email and phone requests to discuss the pardon.
Georgian officials say police have foiled eight other attempts to transport weapons-grade enriched uranium via Georgia over the past 10 years. The most recent intercept came in March 2010. [For background see EurasiaNet’s archive].
Matthew Bunn, a specialist on nuclear theft and terrorism at Harvard University, called Khintsagov’s early release not uncommon, but nonetheless troubling. “One of the key things to stop nuclear smuggling is to try and deter people from getting into nuclear smuggling. … Anything that decreases the consequences is a concern,” Bunn said.
Judging by Khintsagov’s few public statements since his arrest, he is not feeling repentant. This year, he was featured in the anti-nuclear-weapon documentary “Countdown to Zero” by British documentary filmmaker Lucy Walker. “An elephant is a huge animal but nine grams [the size of a bullet] can kill it,” Khintsagov observed in the film, according to a May 16 article published in The Sunday Times. “America is a huge country, but that doesn’t mean everybody has to be afraid of America.”
Not much is known about the Georgian government’s sting operation this past March. At least one arrest has been made in connection with the case, which is still under investigation. At an April 15 appearance in Washington, DC, Saakashvili hinted broadly that the HEU seizure somehow involved Russia or the breakaway regions of Abkhazia or South Ossetia, but declined to give specifics.
The Georgian government’s anti-smuggling efforts have drawn praise from US officials. US Nuclear Security Administrator Thomas D’Agostino, who was in Tbilisi in mid-June for consultations with Interior Ministry officials, noted a “clear commitment by the people of Georgia to work on this problem.”
Over the past five years, the US has given Georgia $37 million in aid as part of its Second Line of Defense nuclear security program. D’Agostino described himself as “proud” of the US-Georgian “commitment to keeping nuclear and radiological material out of the hands of terrorists and smugglers.”
Molly Corso is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi. Giorgi Lomsadze in Tbilisi also contributed reporting to this article.
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