AMERICAN LEAVES 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 next 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.