into appeal against refusal to parole Mikhail Khodorkovsky

The Chita Region Court is taking more than one day to examine the appeal by Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s defence against the decision of the Ingodinsky district court to refuse him parole. The hearing will resume tomorrow at 2 pm local time. Today’s hearing was marked by the failure to bring Mikhail Khodorkovsky to the courtroom and the attempt by the prosecutor to give procedural significance to a pile of scattered papers.

When the hearing began it became clear that Mikhail Khodorkovsky would not be in attendance. The detention centre is only three minutes walk from the courtroom but a video link had nevertheless been set up there. Mikhail Khodorkovsky commented to the court that, of course, he wished to be present since otherwise he could not easily communicate with the defence team.

Defence attorney Vadim Klyuvgant called the failure to bring his client to court “an exceptional incident”. “It was clearly understood that Mikhail Khodorkovsky would need prompt consultation with us,” said Klyuvgant. “Yet he is being kept in the detention centre. They turn on the television and say you can have confidential discussions with him, using the video link microphone.”

The prosecutor then petitioned to have additional materials added to the case. In order for Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his lawyers to form their own opinion of these documents the court declared a recess. The papers were copied and the attorneys took them to the pre-trial detention centre. After studying their contents the lawyers concluded that if the Prosecutor General's office could put forward such papers it had no respect for the court. “Not only do these materials have no relation to the case: neither in form nor in substance do they even confirm what they say they are attempting to prove,” said Klyuvgant indignantly. The defence notes that the prosecution materials have been put together in violation of the law and, for example, in some cases the conclusions of the court in the first conviction are replaced by the investigators’ conjectures. The prosecutor could only justify his materials by saying that they had been sent by the Prosecutor General's office. “Everyone on the prosecution side knows perfectly well that there are no lawful grounds for refusing parole,” commented Klyuvgant at the conclusion of today’s hearings. “That is why they are frantically and chaotically gathering all that comes to hand. The real grounds are envisaged by law but they do not have any and cannot find them so they try to substitute activity, quantity and falsification.”

The court promised to decide whether to add the materials provided by the prosecutor “at the next stage of the process”. This could happen tomorrow.

Defence attorneys Natalya Terekhova and Vadim Klyuvgant then spoke in support of the appeal. In particular, they asserted that the court of the first instance had declined, in essence, to examine the materials concerning parole that had been provided and had not given due consideration to the evidence.

In his speech Mikhail Khodorkovsky also noted that his rights had been substantially restricted during the parole hearings at the Ingodinsky district court. The head of the Krasnokamensk penal colony Mr Ryabko had participated as a representative of the Federal Penitentiary Service when he should have been cross-examined as a witness, with all the procedural consequences that would have involved. Mikhail Khodorkovsky would then have been able to ask Mr Ryabko questions and is sure that such a cross-examination would have revealed a great deal: for instance, that Khodorkovsky had never refused to learn a new occupation in the penal colony or to work and that the infringements for which he was punished were merely fault-finding by the administration.

On Thursday the prosecutor will speak and, perhaps, the defence will make a further contribution. It is promised that Mikhail Khodorkovsky will be brought to court that day.

Interfax, 15.10.2008

On Wednesday Mikhail Khodorkovsky pointed to the lack of objectivity shown by the Ingodinsky district court in turning down his request for parole. He was speaking at a hearing in the Chita Region Court of the appeal by his defence lawyers against the rejection of his petition for parole.

Responding to the claim that he did not want to learn a new occupation in the penal colony, Mikhail Khodorkovsky said that he had worked up until the very last day and had earned more than all the other prisoners who worked with him.

“Nevertheless my surname was crossed off the list of citations. I suggested that the garment-making workshop, which was making a loss because of cross-financing, could be properly organised in the colony,” said the former head of Yukos, “but my services were turned down.”

Khodorkovsky also added that when the Ingodinsky district court was examining the petition for release on parole the court did not take account of the statement made by the director of the penal colony. The latter declared that they could not have pronounced him a persistent offender since all his violations of had been subject to appeal in court.

“This is an abuse of position. The court did not take such a motive into account,” clarified Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

He said that Kuchma, the prisoner who slashed his nose, was installed next to him on the orders of someone from the security section.

“If the court wishes to know the name of that officer I can give it separately. After this Kuchma was moved and he attacked another person with the very same knife. Then he was made subject to a prison regime and in August transferred to Chita to testify against me. The same officer instructed prisoner B to inform on me,” Khodorkovsky told the court.

Three of the reprimands he received in the colony were subsequently annulled by the court, Khodorkovsky reminded the hearing. “The reprimand for drinking tea in the brigade room was a provocation by Kuchma and prisoner B,” explained Khodorkovsky.

He noted that the testimonials compiled in 2006 and 2008 and presented in August by the officials of the Region’s FPS during consideration of his parole petition differed greatly one from another. The court, however, had not taken this into account.