Another truth will be      said right now.

The head of the Federal Penitentiary Service has lodged his resignation of his own free will, since he’s ‘reached the age of retirement from state office’.

On October 28, he celebrated his 60th birthday.

(Interfax,10.11.2006)

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There’s no doubt that Yuri Kalinin had a hand in the Yukos case. In fact he played a crucial role in it. The following points set out to demonstrate this:

1) The head of the Federal Penitentiary Service, Yuri Kalinin, is strongly against any independent medical examination of Platon Lebedev and accuses him of playing on the issue of poor health. ‘I fail to see any point in it – I trust our doctors. We’re quite capable of assessing his health without outsiders’, he said at a Moscow press-conference. (Interfax, 16.02.2005)

Despite Yuri Kalinin’s inexpert medical comments, many people remain extremely concerned about Platon Lebedev’s state of health. The following appeal was signed by British MPs in August 2006: ‘In connection with the third anniversary of Platon Lebedev’s arrest, Parliament expresses its concern about Mr. Lebedev’s June 2005 sentencing to eight years in prison on charges that have been characterized as politically-motivated. Parliament also expresses its concern with the fact that Mr. Lebedev suffers from hypertonia and chronic hepatitis and has been denied medical aid, both during the trial and since his imprisonment in a colony in Kharp village in the Yamalo-Nenetsky autonomous district, a colony that is located over 1,000 miles from Moscow and normally houses dangerous repeat-offenders. Parliament calls on the government of the Russian Federation immediately to provide Mr. Lebedev with a medical examination as recommended by the Council of Europe, and to facilitate his transfer to a detention facility near Moscow. in accordance with article 73 of the Russian Correctional Code’.

2) ‘I don’t yet know where he’ll be serving his sentence. But once the verdict takes effect he’ll be sent away and we’ll tell you where he is’, Mr. Kalinin said. (Interfax, 16.02.2005)

On October 10 2005, defence lawyers learnt that Khodorkovsky was no longer in the Matrosskaya Tishina remand centre. For ten days thereafter neither his family nor the lawyers were told ‘where he is’. Only on October 20 did they find out about Krasnokamensk.

3)On Wednesday morning, the head of the Federal Penitentiary Service, Yuri Kalinin, denied that ex-head of Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky had gone on hunger strike. ‘We have no such information. Khodorkovsky continues to receive regular meals and food packages’, he told the Interfax news agency. The truth is that the evidence underlying this conclusion of his is moot, so his conclusion is merely a personal opinion. (Gazeta.ru, 24.08.2005)

Before Yuri Kalinin made his statement, Mikhail Khodorkovsky had already issued through his lawyers a notification of his hunger strike. Information about it, then, could have been got by Kalunin from the text posted on the press-centre’s web-site - though he probably didn’t log in. Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s appeal ran as follows: ‘On August 19 2005, on the day of the anniversary of the USSR State Committee for the Emergency, my co-defendant Platon Lebedev was moved to a three-square-metre punishment cell. Though the formal reason given for this act of repression was Lebedev’s refusal to take walking exercise, everyone knows that this was just a pretext. Platon is severely ill, and for over a year now he has been unable to take walks. It’s clear that my friend was thrown into solitary simply because they wanted to take it out on me, convict Mikhail Khodorkovsky, for the articles I’ve written and an interview I gave.

Well, let the Kremlin believe that this is the way to demonstrate its power. In fact it’s a demonstration of its weakness. Being incapable of holding an open political discussion with me, they’ve used the last weapons in their armoury: the communal and the solitary cell.

I have gone on hunger strike, without liquids, in solidarity with my friend Platon Lebedev. He knows that he’s not alone. Every one of my fellow-countrymen whose heart longs for justice and freedom should know that we are together’.
(Press centre, 23.08.2005)

4) ‘There has been a good deal of speculation about the fact that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev may have been sent an excessive distance to serve their sentences. This is the result in the first place of there being no vacancies in detention-facilities either in the Moscow district or within the Golden Ring. There is also the necessary consideration for their safety. We have to be sure that nothing happens to them so that nobody can claim we didn’t give them proper security. Either way, the decision about where Khodorkovsky and Lebedev should serve their sentences was made within the framework of current legislation’. (RIA Novosti, 12.12.2005)

a) About the lack of vacancies in Russian colonies. From Yuri Schmidt’s open letter to Minister of Justice Yuri Chaika: ‘… In November last year, speaking in the State Duma during the co-called ‘government hour’, you presented figures for the number of people in penitentiary facilities, down to the last man and woman (!). Your report concluded that in September 2005 - at precisely the time the decision was being taken about which prison-colonies Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev should be sent to - the country’s penitentiaries held 637,079 inmates, with 786,753 places available. There were thus 149,694 vacancies! At the very same time, your subordinate Y. Kalinin, the head of the Federal Penitentiary Service, was giving numerous comments to the mass media assuring the community that Mr. Khodorkovsky’s exile to one of the most remote regions of Russia was caused by the impossibility of finding a place for him nearer to his place of residence, because there were no vacancies at all in any of the colonies, as he put it, ‘within’ the Golden Ring. It’s worth noting that between the Golden Ring and Krasnokamensk in the Chita district there are three Federal Districts and not less than fifty constituent entities of the Russian Federation. . . And it’s hard to believe (as you’ll agree) that none at all of the 150,000 (!) colony-vacancies were any nearer than the Russian-Chinese border, 7,000 kilometres from Moscow - even if only a third of them (a mere 50,000) were in the country’s 200 minimum-security colonies. If you take a look at the right map, it’s easy enough to see that there are only eight colonies located farther from Moscow than the one at Krasnokamensk. . .’ (Novaya gazeta, 27.02.2006)

b) About security. On the night of April 13-14 2006, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was slashed in the face. The convict who attacked Mikhail Khodorkovsky managed to hide in a regularly-searched barracks a total of three knives.

c) About the framework of current legislation. Yuri Schmidt: ‘According to article 73 of the Correctional Code of the Russian Federation, all convicts (except for those in special categories: foreigners, those suffering from tuberculosis, law-enforcement officers, high-risk repeat-offenders, etc.) are to serve their sentence near the place of their residence or their conviction. If there are no colonies of the appropriate regime in these places – then they are to be sent to one of the closest constituent entities of the Federation’.

5) ‘It doesn’t make any difference who a convict is – Khodorkovsky, Ivanov, Petrov or Sidorov. Law and order are the same for everyone - you mustn’t infringe regulations’, says head of the Penitentiary Service Yuri Kalinin. (Interfax, 07.04.2006)

Interesting: Could Mr. Ivanov get five days in solitary for reading Justice Ministry decrees? Or Mr. Petrov seven days in solitary for drinking tea? Or Mr.Sidorov, would he get ten days in the slammer for the possession of two lemons? Yet Khodorkovsky got all of these - and so did Platon Lebedev. After treating a fellow-prisoner to a piece of biscuit, he did six days.

6) The head of the Federal Penitentiary Service, Yuri Kalinin, denies that the colony administration is obstructing the work of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s lawyers. ‘Khodorkovsky’s conditions in prison are no different from those of other inmates. All his rights are observed and in no way infringed on’, he said. (Nezavisimaya gazeta, 22.11.2005)

On March 11 2006, the administration of the Krasnokamensk colony took away attorney Irina Khrunova’s legal ID.

Lawyer Elena Levina underwent attempts by the colony administration to search her.

Lawyer Albert Mkrtychev had documents confiscated by security guards.

On a number of occasions lawyers have simply not been allowed into the colony. After one incident of this sort Karinna Moskalenko sent the following telegram: ‘If this is being done without your knowledge, then I call upon you to order the colony’s senior management to cease and desist from this lawlessness’. (Nezavisimaya gazeta, 30.11.2005)

Karinna Moskalenko talks about the conditions in which lawyers have to work in the colony: ‘. . . I told a Moscow journalist on the phone that we’d finally been given a space where we could work at a single table without bars. I expressed my satisfaction. But the next day, when I arrived, I found everything exactly as it had been before - the bars, the dark room - and we were once more unable to work with documents.’ (Press centre, 20.07.2006)

7) ‘Khodorkovsky’s behaving badly. We’ve already warned him that if he goes on like this he’ll be moved to the punishment block’ (Nezavisimaya gazeta, 12.05.2006)

The punishment block is a very serious prospect. Yuri Schmidt: ‘A second stretch in solitary within a year gets a prisoner jacketed as a dyed-in-the-wool offender and moved into the punishment block for up to six months or into a one-man punishment cell for up to a year. Prisoners in this category are forbidden personal visits for their entire stretch. They’re entitled to a single parcel once every six months; and money spendable by them on groceries cannot exceed 50% of the minimum monthly wage. With special permission from the administration (you have to earn this privilege!) you’re allowed one general (brief) visit every six months’.

8) Mikhail Khodorkovsky can do scientific work in jail, according to the head of the Federal Penitentiary Service, Yuri Kalinin. ‘If that’s what he wants, he can do it to his heart’s content’, Yuri Kalinin told the Interfax news agency on Saturday. Commenting on M. Khodorkovsky’s lawyers’ remarks that their client had not been given a chance to do scientific work since he has no free time, Kalinin said, ‘That’s not true. There’s always free time. People in colonies aren’t busy twenty-four hours a day’. (Interfax, 05.03.2006)

In this case Kalinin’s statement of March 2006 is contradicted by a statement he made in December 2005: ‘Khodorkovsky has finally got down to work. So why do the lawyers think that he, while busy working, should break his schedule and be with them in working hours and not where he works? Prisoners work until six in the evening, and after that there are another four hours for lawyers to meet their clients’. (RIA Novosti, 12.12.2005)

9) ‘After the notorious incident (the knife attack) Khodorkovsky was moved into a separate cell for reasons of safety. He’s now back again in a communal barracks’. (Interfax, 11.05.2006)

a) Yuri Schmidt: ‘If someone wants to do something to him, it’s easier to do it in a separate cell than in a barracks. There are no witnesses. (Lawyer’s press conference, 20.04.2006)

b) When Yuri Kalinin made his statement (March 11,2006), Mikhail Khodorkovsky was still in a single cell. He was moved into his barracks only on May 13. Lawyer Anton Drel: ‘The head of the Federal Penitentiary Service’s official statement about Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s transfer from a single cell to a barracks doesn’t correspond to reality. No explanation has been given for why it should’ve been said that Khodorkovsky had been moved into a communal area while he was still in a one-man cell. State bureaucrats knowingly and mechanically give out false and easily refutable information about Khodorkovsky out of a now-ingrained habit of never telling the truth about this case. It represents yet another example of the low level of trust one should place in the words and actions of those who’ve marked out Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He remains in a single cell where he was placed, according to a representative of the Federal Penitentiary Service, ‘for safety reasons’. Anyone who expects to be protected by officialdom should know that the authorities’ definition of safety is a one-man cell’.
(Press centre, 12.05.2006).