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VOL.449 NO.7159 DATED 13 SEPTEMBER 2007
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News: Russian scientists in Soviet-style security service investigation
A young Russian biologist taking samples to a collaborative institute in France has been accused of attempting to smuggle bioweapons by Russia’s federal security service, the FSB. He has been interrogated repeatedly by FSB agents and prevented from leaving the country. His job also now looks uncertain. In an exclusive Nature news story, the details of his predicament are revealed and experts explain why the accusations are absurd.
Oleg Mediannikov’s Kafkaesque nightmare began on 12 December 2006 at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, as he was about to board a plane to Marseilles. Customs officials confiscated 20 phials containing non-pathogenic strains of a typhus vaccine approved by the Russian health ministry for export to France, along with Mediannikov’s computer and USB memory sticks. The biologist initially thought there was a minor problem with the paperwork. But more than eight months on, the interrogations continue.
The case detailed in Nature illustrates a worrying resurgence in Russian scientists being accused of wrong-doing. Nature has learned of other researchers similarly investigated by an overzealous security service reminiscent of the dark days of its Soviet predecessor, the KGB. “Vladimir Putin has untied the hands of the FSB, and we do see a trend here towards strengthening state control over all spheres of life, including science,” one Russian expert told Nature.
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