Radio Liberty, 17 April 2008

Next Monday the Chita Regional Court will consider an application by the Investigative Committee of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to extend to 2 August the period Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former head of Yukos, and Platon Lebedev, head of MENATEP, can be held in the Chita pre-trial detention facility. The Russian Supreme Court has just rejected an appeal by Khodorkovsky’s attorneys against extending his period of detention in the facility to 2 May. That decision was taken by a local court on 30 January, and the Supreme Court merely confirmed the ruling of its subordinate colleagues.

The judges decided that Khodorkovsky might abscond or exert influence on the course of the investigation of a new criminal case being brought against him, his attorney Vadim Klyuvgant explained:

“There are not and could not be any real circumstances in which doing away with this mode of detention could in any way be prejudicial to the interests of the investigation or of those said to be victims in this affair. Mikhail Khodorkovsky is already serving a court sentence of eight years’ imprisonment. Even if he were not now also under arrest, he would not be released. How on earth can someone who is in prison influence an investigation which the investigators themselves have been claiming for over a year to have completed and for which they claim to have collected all the evidence? How in this situation could anyone influence anything, and where could he abscond to? You can see for yourselves how totally absurd these arguments are.”

Less seasoned observers might be puzzled by the battle being waged by Khodorkovsky’s attorneys to have the terms of his detention altered. What difference, one might wonder, does it make where you are imprisoned, in a detention facility or a prison camp?

“Irrespective of where a person is situated, even if that is in a prison camp, a decision to arrest him can be taken only when there are grounds for doing so under the provisions of the law. We are demanding that the law should be observed, but that is not happening. That is the first point. The second point is that without any question the conditions of detention in the pre-trial facility are substantially worse than in a prison camp. To take an obvious and elementary example, a person held in a pre-trial detention facility is not allowed to receive an extended visit from relatives, only a brief meeting lasting not more than three hours, once a month. For somebody who has now been held in isolation for over four years, that is a real additional restriction of rights and opportunities which is entirely without legal justification,” attorney Klyuvgant continued.

He added that the attorneys had discovered that a new application is being prepared by the investigators. They are now intending to ask the court to extend Khodorkovsky’s detention in the Chita pre-trial facility to 2 August.