London

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has detained a Russian researcher, Igor Sutyagin, who works on arms control, disarmament and security problems, and interrogated two of his colleagues.

Sutyagin, head of the military–technical research section at the US–Canada Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was detained on 27 October by the FSB, the successor to the Soviet KGB. His apartment in Obninsk, 100 kilometres south of Moscow, was searched and officers removed computers and papers.

Later that day FSB officers searched the Moscow apartment of Joshua Handler, a PhD student at Princeton University working on a dissertation on nuclear arms control in the 1990s between Russia and the United States. He is working under Frank von Hippel, vice-president of the Federation of American Scientists.

Officers removed Handler's computer, notebooks, address books, papers, photographs and maps, although they left his passport, money and air ticket. Eight officers spent until late evening searching Handler's apartment and questioning him about his work.

Handler has been a colleague of Sutyagin's, and the US–Canada Institute, for many years. He has now returned to the United States for what he calls a temporary “vacation”.

Handler has worked on arms control for 15 years. He says: “My work has been directed at understanding and improving US–Russian relations in the hope of encouraging greater steps towards nuclear disarmament.” He adds that “it has never, and was never intended to, harm any country's security”.

Handler was until recently a researcher for Greenpeace International. He worked on its nuclear disarmament campaign in the 1980s and 1990s, writing many articles and papers about nuclear weapons and the attendant military and environmental problems.

“I've always published [my] research results openly and sought to disseminate [them] as widely as possible,” he says, adding that it is unclear why Sutyagin has been detained.

In response to Sutyagin's detention, Sergey Rogov, director of the US–Canada Institute, has issued a statement saying: “Like other institute employees, Sutyagin does not have access to information constituting state secrets.”