U.S. Student Leaves Russian Prison

MOSCOW —  Russia freed American Fulbright scholar John Edward Tobin from prison Friday, six months after he was arrested on drug charges in the western city of Voronezh and accused of being a spy in training.

After Tobin’s arrest, Russian officials frequently charged that the 24-year-old political scientist’s education--Russian lessons at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., and interrogation techniques at the Army Intelligence Center at Ft. Huachuca, Ariz.--suggested that he was either an active or would-be spy. However, they did not press espionage charges.

Tobin, who pleaded not guilty and said he was framed, left the prison colony in Rossosh near Voronezh, about 300 miles south of Moscow, on Friday afternoon smiling and sporting a prison-style buzz cut. He made no comment as he was met by U.S. Embassy officials, bundled into a car and whisked away.

In Washington, the State Department said Tobin would travel to Moscow and later the United States. The department said it was too early to tell when he would be able to leave the country, because of Russian legal formalities.

“I’m absolutely elated,” his mother, Alyce Van Etten, told Associated Press from her home in Monticello, N.Y. “I look forward to hearing his voice as soon as possible.”

Tobin, a native of Ridgefield, Conn., was arrested in January outside a Voronezh nightclub. Police said that he was carrying a matchbox containing marijuana and that a search of his apartment turned up another packet of drugs.

He was convicted in April of obtaining, possessing and distributing marijuana and sentenced to three years in prison. A higher court later overturned the distribution charge and reduced his sentence to one year.

Tobin became eligible for parole this week. On Thursday, a parole board approved his release, and the decision was confirmed Friday by a 15-judge panel in Rossosh. He was freed immediately.

Prison officials described Tobin as a model prisoner who spent his days carving icon frames in the prison wood shop.

He “came to be more understanding of our Russia, of our soul,” warden Nikolai Kravchenko said.

Tobin’s case drew high-level attention after regional officials from the Federal Security Service, the main successor agency to the KGB, accused him of being a spy trainee. President Bush is believed to have raised the issue with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin during the recent Group of 8 summit in Italy.

Tobin was on a Fulbright scholarship to Voronezh State University collecting data for a dissertation on Russian political views. After his arrest, he said Russian security officials raised the espionage allegations only after they tried unsuccessfully to persuade him to spy for them. He said the drugs were planted on him to pressure him.

Tobin’s case is one of a string in the past year in which foreigners or Russians working with foreigners were accused of espionage. In December, U.S. businessman Edmond D. Pope was convicted of spying for trying to buy information about a high-speed torpedo; he was swiftly pardoned by Putin in a humanitarian gesture.

A Russian arms control expert, Igor V. Sutyagin, is being tried on espionage charges for allegedly supplying classified information to a CIA-front company in Britain. His lawyers say he was merely compiling Russian news reports for what he believed was a British consulting firm. He faces 20 years in prison if convicted.

Some observers have suggested that the rash of espionage cases was designed to sow suspicion of foreigners among the Russian public.

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Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.