Euro court fines Russia for ex-spy's inhumane jail

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Europe's human rights court on Thursday fined Russia for keeping in a dirty, cramped prison a former spy who once said he had information on the murder last year of fellow ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko.

Colonel Mikhail Trepashkin, born in 1957, had written in a letter that the Kremlin had drawn up a list of enemies to kill which included Litvinenko.

But Russia barred British detectives last year from interviewing Trepashkin, when he was serving four years in a Urals prison for divulging state secrets, when they visited Russia to investigate the murder of Litvinenko by radiation poisoning in London.

Now the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights has fined Russia 3,000 euros (2,000 pounds) for keeping Trepashkin in inhumane conditions.

"The Court concluded that, in Dmitrov Detention Centre, the applicant was kept in a poorly lit 6.6 sq metre cell without access to outside walks or physical exercise for 25 days," the court said in a statement.

"Furthermore, for 14 days, he was detained in a seriously overcrowded cell at the Volokolamsk Detention Centre, sometimes having as little as 1 sq metre of personal space, lacking even basic privacy."

The court has fined Russia thousands of euros this year for human rights abuses in Chechnya. More cases are pending.