Four attorneys for the defence of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev were held for an hour in a police sub-station in Domodedovo airport.

On Sunday night, the defence team arrived in Domodedovo airport to fly to Chita, where Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were to be arraigned on new charges the following day. The lawyers swere stopped at registration and taken to police premises inside the airport.

According to Yuri Schmidt, the lawyers’ documents were confiscated, they themselves were locked up, and moves were made to search them. Because of the ‘stink’ raised, however (the lawyers had managed to contact the mass media and has appealed to the president of Moscow’s Bar Chamber) the police were forced to release them. The lawyers only just managed to make their plane.