MOSCOW — Ailing American businessman Edmond Pope was found guilty of espionage Wednesday and sentenced to the maximum 20 years in prison for illegally obtaining classified blueprints for a high-speed torpedo, his lawyer said.

It was the first time a U.S. citizen had been convicted of espionage in Russia in four decades, since U-2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960. Powers was freed and sent home in exchange for a Soviet spy.

Before the verdict by a Moscow court, Pope had delivered an emotional statement in his defense, accusing the prosecution of lies and asking authorities to "let me go home to my family" in Pennsylvania.

Pope's family and lawyers, as well as the U.S. government, had called repeatedly for him to be freed, in part on health grounds. He has suffered from bone cancer, which was in remission when he arrived in Russia earlier this year, and his family fears the cancer may have returned during his incarceration in the grim Lefortovo prison.

"Although I spent eight months in prison in Russia, I am not a spy. The only decision that you must make is to let me go home to my family," Pope's lawyer Pavel Astakhov quoted him as saying during the closed-door hearing.

Pope, 54, has seven days to appeal the sentence. But Astakhov noted that the last three days would be official holidays in Russia, marking Constitution Day, meaning any appeal must be prepared within the next four days.

The retired U.S. Navy officer had been on trial since Oct. 18. Insisting on his innocence, he contended that the torpedo plans were not secret because they had already been sold abroad and published. Pope is the founder of CERF Technologies International, a company specializing in studying foreign maritime equipment.

The prosecutor had demanded the maximum sentence and $250 million in damages to the Russian defense industry. Pope's lawyers and family accused the court of bias in favor of the prosecutor and the Federal Security Service, which initiated the case.

FSB spokesman Alexander Zdanovich said the court had "confirmed the rightfulness and legality of the FSB investigative activity.

"There is something to protect in Russia as far as state secrets are concerned, and we have done and will done everything for their protection," he was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

The agency has initiated several cases against Russian citizens in the past few years, including environmentalists, journalists and diplomats accused of violating state secrecy laws. Human rights advocates say the security service is using the cases to try to intimidate activists and discourage international contacts.

After the sentencing, Astakhov assailed the court, which turned down all but three of the defense's 200 motions.

"This case will go down in the history of jurisprudence for the number of mistakes that were committed," he said.

"What kind of evenhandedness, objectivity or full judicial examination can be spoken of in this case?"

Astakhov said that in his closing statement, Pope had stressed that the condition for his working in Russia was that no classified materials be included in the publications he was collecting. He said Pope had started collecting information in Russia in 1996, a more open time, and that the atmosphere had since changed sharply.

"The doors that had been opened to the closed enterprises, the closed scientific institutes and the educational establishments all of a sudden slammed shut, like a mousetrap, and he was caught in that mousetrap, still unable to understand what he is accused of and feeling certain that all the materials are not secret," Astakhov said.

He said Pope had described the prosecutor's case as "based on speculation, incorrect conclusions and blatant falsification."

Pope and his wife, Cheri, met at the prison for about an hour on Tuesday, and Mrs. Pope said that he had trouble talking and writing notes. Pope has suffered from attacks of sharp pain during the trial, and has been permitted to sit during the hearings rather than standing as prisoners usually do.

"My husband's very sick and he is very frightened. Quite frankly, the only thing I said to him was 'I am there for you,"' she said.

Cheri Pope wrote a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday begging him to allow Pope to go to a hospital immediately.

"I really believe that if we don't get him to a hospital soon, he will die," she told reporters.

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Putin never responded to her first appeal, she said.

Pope himself also wrote a letter, a copy of which was shown to reporters shortly before the judge read the verdict and sentence.

"I'm writing to request that I be released from prison to return to my family in Pennsylvania and receive health care," the letter began. "I am not well. I need immediate medical care."

A Pennsylvania congressman who accompanied Mrs. Pope to Moscow, Rep. John Peterson, warned that U.S.-Russian relations would suffer greatly if Pope were left untreated.

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