Russian officer guilty of betraying spy ring in US (AP)

MOSCOW – A senior Russian intelligence officer convicted of working for the United States fled Russia on a train just before the Americans busted his ring of 10 Russian sleeper agents.

Details of Col. Alexander Poteyev's quick escape and farewell text message to his wife — asking her to "try to take it calmly" — were among evidence produced by the court Monday as it found him guilty in absentia of high treason and desertion.

Pinup spy Anna Chapman, one of the 10 agents deported from the U.S. in July, testified during the closed trial that only Poteyev could have provided the information that led to their arrest last summer, Russian news agencies reported, citing a summary of the evidence read by the judge as he issued his ruling.

Chapman testified that she was caught after an undercover U.S. agent contacted her using a code that only Poteyev and her personal handler knew, the reports said. She said she immediately felt during the meeting that something was wrong and called her handler in Moscow, who confirmed her suspicions. Chapman and others were arrested shortly after.

The agents, who were arrested a year ago Monday, were deported in exchange for four suspected Western agents who had been imprisoned in Russia. It was the biggest spy swap since the Cold War.

The Moscow military court sentenced the 59-year-old colonel to 25 years in prison and also stripped him of his rank and state medals.

The court said Poteyev got word that the agents were being rounded up in the U.S. and was in such a hurry to leave Russia that he rushed out of a meeting at intelligence headquarters, the Interfax news agency reported. It said Poteyev fled to Belarus, crossed the border into Ukraine and then moved west to Germany and, finally, on to the United States using a passport in another person's name.

He had no time to say goodbye to his wife and later bid his farewells in a text message: "Mary, try to take this calmly. I'm leaving not for some time, but forever. I didn't want to, but I had to. I will start my life from scratch and will try to help the children."

Poteyev's grown son and daughter reportedly have been living in the United States for years.

His court-appointed lawyer, Andrei Kucherov, said Poteyev's wife believes he is innocent and wants to join him in the U.S.

Mikhail Lyubimov, a veteran Soviet spy, described the court's ruling against Poteyev as "symbolic."

"He must be rubbing his hands together and laughing at that together with his family somewhere in the U.S." Lyubimov said, according to Interfax.

The court said Poteyev had overseen the Russian sleeper agents in the U.S. as deputy head of the "S" department of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service.

In addition to Chapman, other agents also confirmed that only he had access to the sensitive information that allowed the U.S. authorities to apprehend them, the RIA-Novosti news agency said.

The court said Poteyev had begun working for American intelligence around 1999-2000 — betraying the agents, their means of communication and financial information. It said Poteyev had sought to hamper the agents' work by forcing them to meet in places that were unsafe and providing them with inferior equipment.

The Russian spies were given a hero's welcome when they returned home, and President Dmitry Medvedev bestowed them with the nation's highest awards in October.

Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a 16-year veteran of the KGB, sang patriotic songs with the spies to celebrate their return. Putin warned in December that traitors come to a bad end and "whatever equivalent of 30 pieces of silver they get, it will get stuck in their throats."

Unlike other members of the spy ring who have stayed out of the limelight, Chapman has basked in the attention. She has stripped down to lingerie for a photo shoot by the Russian edition of Maxim under the caption "For Your Eyes Only," become the new celebrity face of a Moscow bank, joined the leadership of the youth wing of the main pro-Kremlin political party and hosted a TV program.

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Russian oligarch elected head of pro-Medvedev party (Reuters)

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, owner of the New Jersey Nets basketball team, was elected leader of Russia's Right Cause party on Saturday and vowed to overtake the Communists as the No. 2 political party.

Metals tycoon Prokhorov's leadership of the pro-business party, which supports a second term for President Dmitry Medvedev in 2012, marks the first appearance of a powerful businessman on Russia's political scene in almost a decade.

After oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested and stripped of his fortune in 2003, under the presidency of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin who is widely expected to run for president again next year, business leaders have followed an unspoken rule to maintain their distance from politics.

During his acceptance speech before more than 170 party members in Moscow on Saturday, Prokhorov criticized Russia's one-party rule while maintaining that Right Cause is not an "opposition" party.

"Our country is called the Russian Federation, but by structure it is an empire. Only presidential power works here, and this kind of governance cannot provide stability let alone development," he said, promising to steer Right Cause into the parliament during elections later this year.

"We need to take back parliament. In the near future, become the second largest party, and then later, the first," he said.

Prokhorov, who has good relations with the Kremlin and whose net worth Forbes estimates at $18 billion, also said he would like to exclude the word "opposition" from the party's lexicon.

"Our citizens associate the word opposition with marginal groups that have long lost touch with reality, not with political parties," he said.

Putin's ruling United Russia party holds 315 of the 450 seats in the Duma, the lower house of parliament. Right Cause was formed two years ago and has no seats in parliament.

Prokhorov earned a fortune from selling a one-quarter stake in mining firm Norilsk Nickel just before the 2008 financial crisis.

He has a 17 percent stake in the world's largest aluminum producer RUSAL and a 30 percent stake in Russia's top gold miner, Polyus Gold.

(Writing by Jessica Bachman; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

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Khodorkovsky says investors fear Russian corruption (Reuters)

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Widespread corruption and weak rule of law are scaring off investors and increasing the risk of social unrest, jailed ex-tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky said in remarks published on Wednesday.

In an interview with Western newspapers ahead of an economic forum in St. Petersburg, Khodorkovsky said Moscow's pitch to investors could fail and it could face mass street protests if the government does not reform the courts and increase freedoms.

Once Russia's richest man and head of its biggest oil company, the now defunct Yukos, Khodorkovsky was jailed in 2003 after criticizing the Kremlin under then President Vladimir Putin. He is serving a 13-year sentence for two convictions on charges of economic crimes and is due to be released in 2016.

"As for the rule of law, I know only too well that it does not exist in Russia -- the judiciary is not independent at all," Khodorkovsky wrote from jail in the interview posted on the website www.khodorkovsky.ru.

Khodorkovsky, one of the tycoons who made fortunes following the 1991 Soviet collapse, denies his guilt and says he has been prosecuted over business practices that were both legal and widely used, such as the pricing policies that prosecutors based theft charges upon in his second trial.

The United States and European governments have said he appeared to be the victim of selective justice and abuse of the legal system.

Khodorkovsky said corruption was at a historic high and cited Russia's ranking by corruption perceptions monitor Transparency International, which says it is seen as more corrupt than Nigeria.

Western governments should not hesitate to criticize Russia's shortcomings in the sphere of human rights, he said, adding that it was only a matter of time before a new generation "got its teeth into" the political system if it did not change.

"My country's main task is not to miss the historic 'window of opportunity' for peaceful liberalization," he wrote, citing uprisings sweeping North Africa and the Middle East.

Last week, Khodorkovsky's lawyers said he had been sent from Moscow to a prison camp in an undisclosed location in what they called an attempt to thwart his parole request.

They said his family and lawyers were not told where was sent. The interview was conducted in writing through lawyers while Khodorkovsky was still in a Moscow jail.

The Interfax news agency cited an unidentified prison agency official saying Khodorkovsky had been taken to a jail in the Vologda region northeast of Moscow and would later be sent on to a prison in Karelia, a sparsely populated region on the Finnish border between St. Petersburg and the Arctic Circle.

President Dmitry Medvedev said last month it would not be dangerous to release Khodorkovsky, part of his repeated calls for a sweeping reform of the judicial system.

Khodorkovsky questioned whether Medvedev had the power to bring about promised change and said Putin, now prime minister, was blocking his protege's reform efforts.

"Can the President carry out his vision?" he asked. "Everyone knows ... who the most corrupt Russian leaders are -- the ones who reduce Medvedev's reformist ambitions to broken promises."

Putin has taken a tougher stance toward Khodorkovsky, who built up a fortune buying up state assets cheaply after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, saying he had blood on his hands and likening him to American gangster Al Capone.

Khodorkovsky says he was jailed on the orders of senior officials who wanted to carve up his oil company and take revenge for his challenges to Putin's authority. The government has denied any political interference.

His former business empire, which once produced more oil than OPEC member Qatar, was split up and sold after his arrest, and state-controlled oil firm Rosneft bought the largest production assets, making it Russia's biggest producer.

(Editing by Steve Gutterman and Philippa Fletcher)

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Russian envoy in Libya for talks

NEW: Fighting in Misrata area leaves 2 dead, 17 woundedNEW: "We have turned the tide of terror," NATO leader saysSwiss government approves criminal probe against Libya for kidnappings

Misrata, Libya (CNN) -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent an envoy to Libya Monday to meet with rebels trying to bring about an end to Moammar Gadhafi's 42-year-rule, a move that comes after he called for the Libyan leader to step down.

Mikhail Margelov, the presidential special envoy on Africa, was expected to meet with leaders of the rebel Transitional National Council based in the eastern Libyan rebel-stronghold of Benghazi, his spokeswoman, Varvara Paal, said.

Margelov did not rule out traveling to Tripoli to meet with Gadhafi, Paal said.

"My task is to meet with rebel leaders. However, I do not rule out that I may have to go to Tripoli, too, if I get the corresponding order from the president," Margelov told Interfax, the Russian news agency.

Last month, Medvedev joined American and other European leaders in calling for Gadhafi to step down from power. The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Gadhafi, his son and Libya's intelligence chief for alleged crimes against humanity.

Meanwhile, on Monday, the Swiss government authorized the state's attorney general to open a criminal investigation into the kidnappings of two of its citizens, Rachid Hamdani and Max Goeldi, who allegedly have been held hostage in Libya for nearly two years.

The developments came as rebels on the front line in Misrata said the main station supplying electricity to the city, which had been targeted by Gadhafi forces, had been hit. The attack left some areas of the city without power.

According to various rebel fighters, Gadhafi's forces carried out an early morning offensive on both the western and eastern fronts of Misrata.

Government forces pushed 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) into the city of Dafniya on the west side of Misrata and fired dozens of Grad rockets, destroying a plastic factory which killed one person and injured at least one other.

Rebel fighters were able to stop the attacks and pushed toward the west 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) to the outskirts of the city of Zlitan, rebels said.

Two people were killed and 17 others were wounded in the fighting on the western front of Misrata, rebels said.

Libya has been in the throes of a civil war for months, since Gadhafi dug in his heels against popular efforts to force him out of power amid anti-government protests sweeping the Arab world.

NATO is operating under a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use of any means -- with the exception of foreign occupation -- to protect civilians from attack or the threat of attack. It has been conducting airstrikes targeting Gadhafi's military resources.

Moscow has been a strong critic of the NATO-led mission in Libya, arguing that the scope of the organization's air campaign against Gadhafi's forces far exceeds the civilian protection mandate approved by the U.N. Security Council.

But NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Monday its mission has "made considerable progress."

"We have turned the tide of terror unleashed by the Gadhafi regime, we have saved countless lives and we have seriously degraded the ability of the Gadhafi regime to attack civilians, and we have relieved the pressure on cities, such as Misrata," he said.

Since NATO first took action just over two months ago, "we have kept up a high operational tempo, with over 10,000 sorties," Rasmussen said. "We have damaged or destroyed almost 1,800 legitimate military targets. That includes around 100 command-and-control sites -- which Gadhafi used to organize attacks on civilians."

Gadhafi "has lost his grip over much of the country," Rasmussen said. But he added that the regime "still poses a threat. Last week, the United Nations commission of inquiry reported that his forces have committed widespread and systematic war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, torture, persecution and sexual abuse.

"It is an appalling catalogue of crimes. And those very same forces are still launching indiscriminate and illegal attacks against cities such as Zintan," Rasmussen said, referring to the shelling of the city in Libya's western mountains, near southern Tunisia.

"That's why we agreed to extend our mission by a further 90 days," Rasmussen said. "We have intensified our military pressure and we are determined to continue our operation for as long as it takes."

CNN's Maxim Tkachenko and Amir Ahmed contributed to this report.

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Arrest after Russian journalist killing

Russian human rights activists attend a rally in honour of slain journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow on October 7, 2010.Anna Politkovskaya, a critic of the Kremlin, was killed in her apartment building in 2006Rustam Makhmudov will be taken to Moscow for questioningMakhmudov has been on the international wanted list since May 2008

Moscow (CNN) -- A suspect in the killing of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 was arrested in Chechnya on Tuesday, Russia Investigative Committee told CNN.

Rustam Makhmudov was detained in Chechnya's Achkoi-Martan district, according to Russia's Interfax news agency. He will be transported to Moscow for questioning, the committee said.

The arrest was conducted by the Federal Security Service and Russia's Interior Ministry and was facilitated by law enforcement in Belgium where the suspect had been hiding earlier, the committee said.

A fierce critic of the Kremlin, Politkovskaya was found shot dead in her apartment building while she was working on a series of reports about Chechnya for Novaya Gazeta, an independent, Moscow-based newspaper.

Lawyer Murad Musayev told Interfax that videos and DNA tests will prove Makhmudov's innocence.

The slain journalist's lawyers were not impressed by the arrest.

"We do not consider the detention of the perpetrator of the crime to be a breakthrough because the investigators have long been suspecting Rustam Makhmudov of involvement in this crime. I can't thank the investigators for his arrest because it should have been done four years ago," lawyer A. Stavitskaya told Interfax.

Politkovskaya was shot dead in an elevator of her apartment bloc in Moscow on the afternoon of October 7, 2006, as she was going home.

Ibragim and Jabrail Makhmudov -- Rustam Makhmudov's brothers -- and two former law enforcement officers were suspects in the case.

A Moscow district court acquitted them in February 2009 because of lack of evidence.

The Russian Supreme Court repealed the acquittal and ordered the prosecution to re-investigate the case.

Investigators say they believe it was Rustam Makhmudov who pulled the trigger on Politkovskaya. He was on the run at the time of the killing for another crime he was charged with earlier. He has been on the international wanted list since May 2008.

CNN's Maxim Tkachenko contributed to this report.

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Russian company releases iOS decryption tools (Appolicious)

The first set of commercially sold tools for cracking into an iPhone’s security have been made available by a Russian company. You might want to change your iOS passwords to something more solid than “1234.”

According to a story from Ars Technica, Russian data security company ElcomSoft has created a set of software tools that can be used to break through the encryption on an iPhone. Part password-breaker, part scanner for encryption numbers to get further data out of the phone, the tools are only being made available to law enforcement. Here’s a quote from Ars’ story:

“The decryption tool requires access to the device in question, but once it's in hand, a few different kinds of keys need can be scraped from it, including the unique device key (UID) and escrow keys calculated using the UID and escrow pairing records. If the device is only protected by a 4-digit passcode, the program then only needs to brute-force its way through that to get access to all of the decryptable information.”

As Ars points out, the security features of Apple’s iOS platform aren’t exactly impregnable, and the story goes on to mention that a similar decryption method was created by the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology in February. The difference is that those tools aren’t for sale.

And though the decryption tools exist, they’re not infallible, either. Switching out a 4-digit code for a longer and more complex password basically stops the commercially available tools dead, since the password breaker works by trying number combinations until it finds the right one. Mix it up, and the first step of the decryption gets stalled out.

Another good way to beat the decryption: Keep your iPhone stuffed full of incriminating information out of the hands of the coppers. Without the device, they got nothin’.

With smartphones becoming more and more prevalent, though, data and information stored on them is being used in ways their creators and owners might not have considered. It’s a good idea to keep in mind that the things you do on your smartphone might not remain private.

The U.S. Senate is considering an amendment to a law that would offer more protections to citizens about the use of their data in the cloud and on smartphones by law enforcement, but it’s not infallible. It came out just a few weeks ago that law enforcement officials were using a bug in iPhones to track their owners’ movements for investigations, with no warrant required.

Moral of the story: Use your smartphone cautiously, both for your security and your privacy.

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Russian court upholds Khodorkovsky conviction (Reuters)

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian appeals court upheld a multi-billion-dollar theft and money laundering conviction against jailed former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky on Tuesday and reduced his 14-year prison sentence by one year.

The court rejected an appeal by Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, against his December 30 conviction in a trial seen by his supporters as a test of President Dmitry Medvedev's promises to improve the rule of law.

Khodorkovsky, 47, and his business partner Platon Lebedev, were initially convicted of fraud and tax evasion in a separate trial in 2005.

The court "imposes on Khodorkovsky and Lebedev punishment in the form of imprisonment for a term of 13 years," Judge Olga Arochkina said after the one-day hearing of their appeals.

The Moscow City Court ruling means former Yukos oil company chief Khodorkovsky, who fell foul of the Kremlin during Vladimir Putin's presidency and has been jailed since 2003, will remain in prison well into 2016.

One of Khodorkovsky's lawyers, Karina Moskalenko, called the one-year reduction of the sentence "cosmetic" while Amnesty International declared Khodorkovsky and Lebedev "prisoners of conscience."

Khodorkovsky, wearing a black shirt and watching from a glass-walled cage in the courtroom, smiled to his relatives as the judge read out the court's decision. Supporters outside the courtroom protested, calling the decision a "disgrace."

Khodorkovsky's lawyer Vadim Klyugvant said they would appeal against the decision "at all Russian and international levels available to us by law," making an apparent reference to the European Court of Human Rights.

In December, the trial judge who convicted Khodorkovsky sentenced him to serve a total of 14 years in prison, counting from his initial arrest at a Siberian airport in October 2003.

Government critics describe the prosecution of Khodorkovsky as part of a Kremlin campaign to tighten state control over oil revenues and punish the tycoon for perceived challenges to Putin, president from 2000-2008 and now prime minister.

"We have become witnesses to yet another act of shameless, selective and illegal political massacre, which has already been going on for eight years and is directed at targets outside of the realm of justice," said defense lawyer Yuri Shmidt.

STOLEN OIL

Khodorkovsky's lawyers protested last year after Putin, speaking on a nationally televised question and answer session responded to a question about the former magnate saying, "a thief must sit in jail."

Western governments have condemned the December verdict, saying it raised questions about Russia's commitment to the rule of law.

U.S. officials and prominent members of the Russian elite have warned the second conviction could discourage new investment in the country.

An aide to trial judge Viktor Danilkin, who declared Khodorkovsky guilty last year, stepped down in March after she said the verdict had been dictated from above.

Khodorkovsky is charged with stealing billions of dollars of oil from Yukos subsidiaries through price mechanisms and laundering some of the money.

"The prosecution is obviously absurd, because all our oil was given to the state company Transneft. No oil has disappeared either physically or on paper," said Khodorkovsky to the court.

Yukos produced more crude than OPEC-member Qatar at the height of its success.

Critics of the trial say the verdict and sentence were designed to keep the politically ambitious former businessman from challenging a favored candidate in next year's presidential election.

Both Putin, whose first term as president was defined by Khodorkovsky's earlier trial, and Medvedev whom Putin steered into office in 2008 have said they may run in next year's poll.

(Writing by Thomas Grove; Editing by Maria Golovnina)

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Trial under way for accused Russian whistleblower (AP)

MOSCOW – A military court in Moscow has opened a trial against a former Russian intelligence officer accused of helping U.S. authorities to arrest a Russian spy ring.

Alexander Poteyev has been charged with high treason and desertion. Prosecutors claim he tipped off American authorities about Anna Chapman and her fellow deep-cover agents. He is being tried in his absence.

Court spokeswoman Lyudmila Klimenko said on Russian television on Monday that a panel of judges had started the trial, which will be closed to public.

Russian media say Poteyev controlled U.S.-based spy operations from Moscow, and fled to America just before Washington announced it had uncovered the 10 spies last summer. They were deported in exchange for four suspected agents who had been incarcerated in Russia.

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