The wife of US businessman Edmund Pope spoke Thursday of her joy tinged with sadness after a prison meeting with her husband who is on trial in a Moscow court on espionage charges.
Cheri Pope said officials at Moscow's Lefortovo prison had refused to allow her to present her husband with trinkets from home, including photographs of his young grandson, clothing, medicine and Bible notes.
"But we did get to embrace and talk of our family for one hour, and that was wonderful," she told Echo Moscow radio.
Cheri Pope said she and her husband found it difficult to comprehend why the court had refused him the right to a jury trial, or why she had been barred from the closed-door proceedings. Russian officials cite national security.
Pope denies charges of stealing Russian defense secrets, saying the information he gathered had been collected openly and paid for with the knowledge and approval of Russian institutions.
"Truthfully, I don't understand any of this," said Cheri Pope, who has only seen her husband three times since his arrest in early April.
"He has been over here 26 times and he was arrested, charged two weeks later with espionage and we have never been able to get information on what the charges were," Mrs. Pope told Echo Moscow.
US Congressman John Peterson, from the couple's home state of Pennsylvania, told the radio station that Pope was "a good friend" of Russia who had sought to help the country succeed in the commercial world.
"I think the unfortunate part of the Pope case is many of us ... hoped we could develop a friendship with Russia," he said.
"We hoped ... that the era of the Cold War was over."
Pope's trial resumes Friday -- MOSCOW (AFP)
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