The Basmanny court declined the petitions made by the defence teams non prosequitur against the decree issued by deputy Prosecutor General, Grin, to have the preliminary investigations conducted in Chita.

‘Having considered the arguments of the petition…’ the Basmanny court ‘…did not find sufficient evidence that the decree breaches the constitutional rights of the accused, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, nor that it under any circumstances impedes their access to justice. Moreover, the court does not consider the lawyers’ petition satisfactory as it disregards Article 125 of the RF Criminal Procedural Code.’

Comment by Yury Schmidt: ‘Today, Basmanny court issued a decree, which refuses to address the complaints made by the defence team against Prosecutor Grin’s decision to conduct preliminary investigations in Chita and furthermore states that the constitutional rights of Mikhail Khodorkovsky are not being violated by this ruling. This has been invented by the Basmanny court. It was not even mentioned during the ruling of the Supreme Court’s trial jury on the 25th of December.’