Grigory Pasko

Grigory Pasko

"The 2002 Reporters with Borders - Fondation de France Prize has been awarded to Russian journalist Grigory Pasko, who was sentenced to four years in prison for having denounced an act of pollution. The Prize was remitted to Pasko's wife, Galina Morozova, on Tuesday, 10 December 2002, at 8:45 a.m., at Espace EDF Electra in Paris, on the occasion of the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...

"After having already spent 20 months in jail in 1997 and 1999 before he was even granted a trial, Grigory Pasko was put behind bars again, in December 2001, where he has been ever since, for the same reasons. Grigory Pasko was sentenced to four years in prison merely for having thoroughly investigated and written hundreds of articles about the pollution caused by the quasi-abandonment - with the complicity of the FSB (ex-KGB) - of the Russian military's nuclear submarines, and for allegedly releasing images of the Russian fleet dumping radioactive liquids into the Sea of Japan. These images, which he filmed while working as a correspondent for the naval newspaper Boevaya Vakhta, were broadcast by the NHK Japanese television station, raising vigorous international protests. The FSB deemed these to be acts of "espionage" and "high treason", and he was sentenced in 2001 by the Vladivostok Military Court. In June 2002, the Moscow Supreme Court upheld his sentence of four years in prison without parole. Most of his legal recourses having now been exhausted, Grigory Pasko is still languishing in prison, in the place of those who are responsible for the criminal pollution that he exposed."

• Winner of 2001 HRW Hellman-Hammett Grant
• Winner of the 2002 Reporters Sans Frontieres-Fondation de France prize