FULBRIGHT SCHOLAR RELEASED ON PAROLE FROM RUSSIAN PRISON

ROSSOSH, Russia -- Thin and pale, American Fulbright scholar John Tobin
gave a brief smile as he strode out through the gates of a shabby prison
in southern Russia on Friday after serving half of his one-year drug
sentence.

The 24-year-old Tobin, who said he was jailed after refusing to spy for
Russia, was flanked by prison officials who elbowed their way past
journalists outside the white brick walls of the Soviet-era prison in
the town of Rossosh.

Without stopping to talk, he got into a car with two U.S. Embassy
representatives and drove to catch an overnight train to Moscow from the
regional center of Voronezh, where he loaded two cartloads of books and
personal belongings into his train car.

Asked at the station if he was bitter over his ordeal, Tobin said, "No,"
but otherwise declined to speak to reporters.

A court approved his parole Friday at a prison hearing, following a
unanimous parole board recommendation on Thursday that he be let go.

Tobin was arrested in January in Voronezh, where he was doing political
science research. He was convicted in April of obtaining, possessing and
distributing marijuana and sentenced to 37 months in prison.

A higher court, however, overturned the distribution conviction and
reduced the sentence to one year.

The Connecticut native was arrested as he left a Voronezh nightclub, and
police said they found him to be in possession of a small amount of
marijuana. The case took on political overtones when the Russian Federal
Security Service charged that Tobin was a spy in training, citing his
Russian studies at the elite Defense Language Institute in Monterey,
Calif.

No espionage charges were filed, however, and Tobin said he was framed
on the drug charges because he refused to work for Russian intelligence.

Tobin's case was taken up by members of Congress from Connecticut, who
wrote to Russian officials and pressed President Bush to take up the
matter in his meetings with President Vladimir Putin.

U.S. Rep. James H. Maloney, who represents Tobin's district in Congress,
said he and Tobin's family are concerned that something may happen to
Tobin before he leaves Russia. "We're on guard for that."

Tobin was expected to return to the United States by Tuesday or
Wednesday, Maloney said.

"I'm absolutely elated," said Alyce Van Etten, Tobin's mother, who lives
in Monticello, N.Y. "I look forward to hearing his voice as soon as
possible."

Russian prison and court officials in the Voronezh region sounded eager
to put the controversy behind them. "We have to get rid of this headache
for the (prison) administration," Rossosh Judge Boris Gladko said
Thursday.

Prison officials said Tobin was a model inmate, learning woodcarving,
attending the prison's small Russian Orthodox chapel and working out.

They also used the news media attention as a chance to boast about
prison conditions, which they said were better than in many of Russia's
overcrowded, tuberculosis-ridden facilities.

Last December, Edmund Pope, a U.S. businessman convicted of spying and
sentenced to 20 years in a Russian prison, was quickly pardoned by Putin
as a humanitarian gesture.