The trial of Igor Sutyagin, like the recently concluded proceedings against American Edmond Pope, stems from charges brought by the Federal Security Service, a domestic successor agency to the Soviet KGB. Pope was convicted of espionage this month and then pardoned by President Vladimir Putin.

The trials have come at a time when some Russian analysts have expressed concern about the growing prominence of the security agencies under Putin.

Since being elected president almost a year ago, Putin, a career KGB agent, has promoted former colleagues to high-ranking government posts. Some analysts say he has given a green light to espionage prosecutions aimed at environmentalists and scientific researchers in a bid to restore the security services to the stature they had during the Soviet era.

Sutyagin, 35, a researcher at the prestigious Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada, was head of a section in the institute's department of political-military research. He was arrested Oct. 27, 1999, on espionage charges and has been in jail awaiting trial ever since. If convicted, he could face 20 years in prison.

Sutyagin's family and friends have insisted that he never had secret information and was not spying. Evidence in the case is secret, and lawyers said Sutyagin received copies of the details only on Dec. 15. The trial was recessed today until Jan. 9. On an Internet site, Sutyagin's family said "this criminal case is being framed with no grounds at all."

The details of the spying charges, brought by the security service office in Kaluga, the town in which Sutyagin lives south of Moscow, have never been clear. At first, the case appeared to focus on Sutyagin's work on a study of civil-military relations funded by the Canadian Defense Ministry. Sutyagin's family says the study did not deal in secret matters and was partially sponsored by the Russian Defense and Foreign ministries.

According to his family, Sutyagin may also be accused of transferring secrets to companies abroad while serving as a consultant, but they have insisted he never dealt in such classified information.

The accusations also apparently involve an American graduate student, Joshua Handler, who was a guest of the USA-Canada Institute while working toward a doctorate from Princeton University on arms control issues. Just after Sutyagin was taken into custody, Handler's Moscow apartment was searched and a laptop computer and other materials were seized. Handler subsequently left Russia.

Handler, a former activist for Greenpeace and well-known researcher on arms control and strategic weapons issues, has said his work was done from open sources.

Last week, the director of the security service, Nikolai Patrushev, said in an interview with the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda that the charges against Sutyagin focus on his connection with Handler.

"In the course of the investigation, we revealed the spying activities of his contact, U.S. resident Joshua Handler, an expert in nuclear security, who is currently in the United States," he said, according to the paper.

"During the preliminary investigation, it was ascertained that Sutyagin supplied to Handler secret information on the Russian armed forces, and the latter transferred it to the U.S. intelligence service. Unfortunately, some journalists do not know of this and are trying to present Sutyagin as an 'honest and courageous citizen who supports democratic liberties' in their articles," he said.

"Mr. Patrushev's comments are absurd," Handler said today. "They could only be the result of spy mania and paranoia being encouraged by the FSB." He added that he used public information from the U.S. National Archives, the U.S. and Russian governments and the press. Handler said his work "has sought to inform the public about important nuclear and environmental problems, the need to reduce armaments and the desirability of good U.S.-Russian relations.

"My case is the latest in a growing line, where Americans living and working in Russia are being harassed while pursuing perfectly normal activities by any civilized standard," Handler said. "I hope the new administration puts its foot down before things go from bad to worse."