On Tuesday, a district court in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk paroled a Russian physicist Valentin Danilov who was imprisoned in 2004 for spying for China. He is planned to be released in 10 days when the court decision comes into force.

      Danilov was arrested by the FSB, successor of KBG, in 2001 on charges of selling classified data to China. In 2004 he was sentenced to 14 years in prison - the term which was later reduced by one year.

      The investigation found that Danilov passed the results of research conducted for the Russian Defense Ministry to officials in the All-China Import-Export Company Precision Engineering and the Lanzhou Institute of Physics in 1999.

      Danilov's sentence caused mass protests among scientific circles. He was defended by many Russian and foreign influential scientists including Vitaly Ginzburg, Sergey Kapitsa, and Yury Ryzhkov. Human rights activists claimed that Danilov had become a victim of the "anti-espionage" struggle which the Russian security forces were "obsessed with" at that time. The scientist himself repeatedly said that the information he was accused of selling had been available in scientific journals and had been declassified for over 10 years.

      Danilov was meant to serve 3 years, 2 months and 11 days more. Now he is planning to move and settle in Novosibirsk after he is released.