The Moscow Court will clear if the Basmanny Court can defend Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. (Defence's docs are enclosed)

On April 16, at 3 in the afternoon, the prosecution’s appeal against the Basmanny Court’s ruling that the Chita investigations were illegal will be heard in courtroom # 422 of the Moscow City Court (Bogorodsky val, building 8).

On Monday, the Prosecutor-General’s office will once more attempt to justify Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev’s imprisonment in Chita, while their lawyers will continue to insist that the ‘Chita operation’ was in violation of penal law and the Constitution.

Yuri Schmidt, who describes the upcoming hearing as ‘very important’ to the entire case’s outcome, has asked journalists to attend Monday’s hearing in the Moscow City Court: ‘It’s very easy to grasp the substance of the case, and I want journalists to hear in person and to compare the defence’s and the prosecution’s arguments’.

On February 3, 2007, Deputy-Chief Prosecutor V.Y.Grin signed a decree which resulted in Chita’s pre-trial detention-centre becoming the venue for preliminary investigations into new cases against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. The defence characterized this as illegal, since Chita did not figure in any of the evidence, and it lodged an appeal with the Basmanny Court. On March 20, the Basmanny District Court unexpectedly found the Deputy-Chief Prosecutor’s decree to have been illegal and ungrounded. On March 22, it was announced that the Prosecutor-General’s office had filed an appeal against this judgment.