Four years ago, on 25 October 2003, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was detained by a special forces detachment in Novosibirsk. The arrest of the man who headed one of the largest and, at the same time, most transparent of Russia’s oil companies was immediately given the court’s approval.

Thus began the Yukos case, the first show trial of the post-Stalin era, and an affair which has radically altered the political and economic landscape of our country. Khodorkovsky was not the first victim on this sad list: he was preceded by Alexei Pichugin and Platon Lebedev. After his arrest many of the legal staff and managers of Yukos were sentenced to years of imprisonment. We recall that mother of three Svetlana Bakhmina was given a six-year sentence. Then followed 14-15 year sentences. Alexei Pichugin was sentenced to life imprisonment …

In the struggle with Mikhail Khodorkovsky the political costs have been disregarded. The Yukos affair was preceded and accompanied by thoroughly orchestrated propaganda campaigns, during which Kremlin apologists spoke without any inhibition about the political significance of destroying Yukos and arresting Khodorkovsky. His defence attorneys have been subjected to unprecedented and humiliating harassment, including unlawful searches and confiscation of documents, detention, arrest and expulsion from Russia.

As a result, Yukos now belongs to state corporations linked with the company’s political enemies and the security services. In this way the 16th-century practices of Ivan the Terrible’s oprichnina have been revived when the belongings of the victim were taken by his persecutors. The trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky has buried the reputation of the contemporary Russian judicial system and made “Basmanny-style justice” notorious everywhere. As the PACE special envoy on the Yukos affair, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, stated “lawlessness now rules Russia”. Courts in Britain, Switzerland, Lithuania and other democratic countries, convinced that the Yukos case is political, have subjected the Russian authorities to a humiliating refusal to give legal assistance and cooperate with extraditions.

Not satisfied with these achievements, the Prosecutor General's office has again accused Khodorkovsky and Lebedev that everything Yukos ever produced was stolen! Evidently apprehensive about a second show trial in Moscow, and one held during the elections moreover, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are being detained, contrary to the rulings of the court, in the pre-trial detention centre in Chita.

Nothing remains of Yukos. The Open Russia foundation is paralysed. Gigantic state corporations have risen from the company’s ruins. The Russian authorities are not threatened by anything but squabbling between its corrupt clans. Khodorkovsky and Yukos were used to create a political provocation. That task has been fulfilled. To keep Khodorkovsky in prison for the next four years, let alone condemn him to a lengthy new sentence, would be a demonstration of vindictive malice.

According to the spirit and the letter of the law, both Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev are entitled to apply for parole. They have already served half the sentence handed down by the court. Their release and that of other participants in the Yukos affair would be a striking culmination to Vladimir Putin’s presidency.

We consider that, as he reaches the end of his term in office, the President of Russia might act with dignity and release Khodorkovsky, Lebedev, Bakhmina and others imprisoned as part of the Yukos case.

Freedom for Russian political prisoners!


Ludmila Alekseeva, the head of Moscow Helsinki group
Lev Ponomarev, For human rights movement
Boris Strugatsky, writer
Lidiya Grafova, journalist-human rights activist
Alla Gerber, the president of the Holocaust fund
Andrey Piontkovsky, writer, political analyst
Yuri Samodurov, Director of the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Centre