You will find below the indictment that was filed against Aleksandr Nikitin before the trial in St. Petersburg City Court in October 1998, as well as various other material containing comments to an analyses of that indictment.

On October 29, 1998, six days into the trial, the City Court rejected the indictment and returned the case to the Russian Security Police (FSB) for additional investigation, since the indictment did not present any tenable evidence against Mr. Nikitin. The Russian Supreme Court maintained this decision on February 4, 1999.

The FSB finalised the additional investigation in July 1999. The complete indictment was, however, first presented to Nikitin’s defence on November 11, 1999, only a mere 12 days before the start of the second trial. While the previous indictment was an open document, the new one is stamped "secret". The reason for the secrecy is that the indictment quotes the alleged "secret" information in the Bellona-report about naval reactors of the third generation (chapter 2.3.3) and accidents on Russian nuclear submarines (chapter 8.2).

Except from these quotations the two indictments are virtually identical. The new indictment’s factual description of Nikitin’s alleged "illegitimate activities" remains unchanged. Besides, the indictment is – as before – based on expert evaluations which in its turn is based on secret and/or retroactive legislation (decrees 1203:95 and 061:98 from the Russian President and decrees 071:93 and 055:96 from the Ministry of Defence).

Thus, all the material presented in the below links is still of obvious relevance, both for the case as such and as analyses of the factual and legal foundation of the criminal case.