Application by Khodorkovsky’s lawyers to be examined on Friday

On Monday the Ingodinsky district court began to examine a motion by Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s lawyers that his recent punishment for the publication in Esquire was unlawful.

These were the preliminary hearings. The substantive consideration of the case will begin on Friday, reports a correspondent from Interfax-Siberia. The case is being heard within the framework of civil law proceedings.

Khodorkovsky’s defence attorneys and representatives of the Chita pre-trial remand centre presented documents to the court. The judge examined them and scheduled the consideration of the case for Friday. At the preliminary hearings the defence attorneys explained that the published statements by Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the magazine had been made during meetings with his lawyers and also in court.

“When they work with Khodorkovsky the lawyers write down, for their own use, the things he says. Khodorkovsky dictates to the lawyer and then the lawyers use his ideas for the purposes of defence in court,” Natalya Terekhova told the court and offered to show these notes to journalists.

She also said that since Khodorkovsky spends a great deal of time outside the jail, the lawyers might have written down his statements in court or at the prosecutor’s office where each day he familiarise himself with the new case materials.

Therefore, Khodorkovsky did not deserve to spend time in the punishment cell. “A person should not be punished for passing information to the public,” Terekhova is convinced.

Khodorkovsky was sent to the punishment cell for 12 days on 8 October. The pretext was the publication in the October issue of Esquire of his exchange of views with writer Boris Akunin.

The declaration presented to the court by Khodorkovsky’s defence lawyers commented that the decision of the Chita jail director, seven days before the appeal against the refusal to grant their client parole, was “wittingly and evidently unlawful”.

(Interfax, 10.11.2008)