Agents search US activist's Moscow apartment

By Brian Whitmore, Globe Correspondent, 10/30/99

MOSCOW - Russian security agents have searched the Moscow apartment of American researcher and Boston native Josh Handler, who is in Russia researching a doctoral thesis on nuclear disarmament issues.

About 10 agents from Russia's Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the Soviet KGB, showed up at Handler's apartment with a search warrant Wednesday afternoon and went through his belongings for seven hours, leaving at 11:30 p.m. They seized notebooks, a laptop computer, an address book, papers, maps, newspaper clippings, photographs, and tapes from his answering machine, Handler said last night.

''I am deeply concerned that the Russian security services have harassed Josh Handler and confiscated his property. This behavior is unacceptable,'' Senator Edward M. Kennedy said in a statement last night. Kennedy's spokesman, Will Keyser, said the senator has contacted the State Department about Handler's situation. The US Embassy here has complained about Handler's treatment to Russian officials, a US official in Washington said.

A doctoral candidate at Princeton University, Handler, 39, has been in Russia since February as a guest of the Russian Academy of Sciences' prestigious USA and Canada Institute. He is researching a dissertation on Russian-American disarmament issues. He said he has made about a dozen trips to Russia since 1990.

A former Greenpeace antinuclear campaign coordinator, Handler also has published research on the environmental hazards caused by nuclear facilities in Russia. He recently wrote an article on the subject of how Russia stores nuclear warheads once they are removed from decommissioned missiles. The article, which appeared on the Web site of the Federation of American Scientists, pointed out safety hazards in the process due to a lack of storage space.

Alexei Yablokov, a Russian environmentalist and director of the USA and Canada Institute, said the search was part of a wave of harassment against researchers working in the area of nuclear safety.

Over the past several years, the Federal Security Service has repeatedly searched, interrogated, and occasionally jailed nuclear researchers. In the most famous case, retired navy captain Alexander Nikitin was arrested in 1996 and charged with espionage over a report he wrote exposing the slipshod handling of nuclear waste by Russia's North Sea Fleet. Nikitin spent 10 months in prison and, although he is free on bond, his case is still not resolved.

''In none of my work have I ever intended to harm the national security of Russia. I have nothing to hide,'' Handler said.

''You get a bit spooked after something like this, but it is very important for me to stay here and explain to people why I think the work I do is important,'' Handler said.

This story ran on page A02 of the Boston Globe on 10/30/99.
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