On Saturday, in accordance with a decision taken by the Ingodinsky district court in Chita, Khodorkovsky, Lebedev and their defence teams finished reading the documentation of the new criminal case against the two men.

On completion of this process Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev and their defence attorneys submitted a joint petition to the Investigative Committee at the Prosecutor General's office, calling for the case to be closed in view of the innocence of the defendants.

The petition describes the investigation as a politically motivated undertaking. It supports this assessment with reference to the motion of 25 January 2005 passed by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and to the following rulings, decisions and judgments made by a variety of courts in different countries, all asserting that the prosecution of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev is not being conducted in the pursuit of legal ends:

• The judgments of 25 October 2007, issued by the European Court of Human Rights, in the case of Lebedev vs. Russia (application 4493/04);

• the ruling of 22 March 2005 by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation;

• the ruling of 13 August 2007 by the federal tribunal of the Swiss Confederation;

• the decree of 24 August 2007 by the Prosecutor General’s office of the Lithuanian Republic, subsequently confirmed by the Vilnius district court;

• the decisions of 18 March, 17 August and 23 December 2005 by the Magistrates Court in Bow Street, London (United Kingdom);

• the decision of 25 April 2004 by the Supreme Court of the Principality of Lichtenstein;

• the decree of 31 October 2007 by the district court of the city of Amsterdam (Netherlands)

The petition likewise states that the demands made of Yukos, its major shareholders, managers and employees by the tax authorities and others are also politically motivated and without foundation.

The petition subjects the substance of the accusations to critical analysis and cites examples of the flagrant violation of current Russian legislation.