The Moscow City Court has also now read Article 125 of the Code of criminal procedure but decided in favour of the Prosecutor General’s office.

The Moscow City Court today turned down an appeal by Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s defence team against the June 2007 ruling of the Basmanny court. The district court then did not uphold an appeal by Yury Schmidt, objecting to the new criminal charges against his clients formally announced by Prosecutor S.K. Karimov.

Today’s ruling, however, sets a precedent. Acting as a court of appeal the Moscow City Court has approved the grounds on which the lower court rejected Schmidt’s appeal. The Basmanny district court considered it was not empowered to examine that appeal. ‘According to current legislation the court is not endowed with the power to exercise supervision over the activities of the preliminary investigation and the prosecutor’s office,’ wrote the judge N.E. Mishnikova in her 26 June pronouncement.

Khodorkovsky’s defence lawyers considered that this directly contradicted part 1 of Article 125 (Court Procedure for Considering Complaints) of the Code of Criminal Procedure and lodged an appeal. Today the Moscow City Court has turned down their application although the text of the aforementioned article reads as follows: ‘The decisions of the inquirer, the investigator and the public prosecutor whether to refuse to institute a criminal case or whether to terminate a criminal case: their other decisions and actions (or lack of action), which may harm the constitutional rights and freedoms of the participants in the criminal court proceedings or may interfere with the citizens' access to the administration of justice: these may all be the subject of appeal to the district court at the place where the preliminary inquiry is being conducted,’ (Note: this is how the article read at the moment when the appeal was submitted).

‘In essence, the court has declined to exercise its powers,’ the defence lawyer taking part in today’s hearings commented, ‘although it was the only body to which we could appeal against the actions of the investigators. This raises the question whether appeals against any actions of the investigators or the prosecutor’s office can henceforth be heard in the courts,’ concluded an amazed Olga Mikhailova.