A Russian physicist convicted of spying for China was given a 14-year prison sentence Wednesday in a trial. Earlier this month, a jury found Valentin Danilov guilty of passing information to China, and a judge at the Regional Court in the city of Krasnoyarsk in Siberia sentenced him to 14 years in a maximum security prison. Danilov, 53 has pleaded innocent, arguing that the information he provided was no longer classified and came from open sources. "The trial wasn't free, fair or lawful," Danilov's lawyer Yelena Yevmenova told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. Yevmenova said that Danilov would appeal the sentence to Russia's Supreme Court and the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. "I hope he (Danilov) will have enough health and strength to keep on fighting," Yevmenova said. Danilov was arrested in February 2001 and accused of selling classified information on the impact of space environment on satellites and of misappropriating funds from Krasnoyarsk State Technical University.
