Court resumes discussion of Platon Lebedev’s detention in custody on Friday

At the Chita Region Court today the defence presented its objections to an extension of Platon Lebedev’s detention in custody until 2 February 2009.

“Additional materials were presented that confirm the arguments of the defence and refute the argumentation in the decree, petitioning for an extension of Lebedev’s detention in custody,” said defence lawyer Sergei Kupreichenko.

Together with materials that testify to the character of Platon Lebedev, the court was also provided with the records of cross-examinations about the which the investigators preferred to forget. Decisions issued by courts abroad, disproving the arguments of the investigation, were also presented. In addition the Chita Region Court received the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, which has come into force, and media publications containing the statements of high-ranking officials concerning the political motivation behind the Yukos case.

The court gave the prosecutor until Friday to formulate his response.

“The investigators are afraid I’ll go free”
Interfax reports Lebedev’s words

Platon Lebedev considers that all the arguments presented by the investigators to the court in support of his continued detention in custody are without foundation.

“The investigators cannot justify their petition. Their argument does not meet procedural norms,” he said on Tuesday at a hearing of the Chita Region Court. In Lebedev’s words, he could not have committed all the acts with which he is charged because he was, at the time, either being held in the pre-trial detention centre in Moscow, or outside the country, or was not working for Yukos. This is confirmed by entries in his employment record.

There are also crimes mentioned in the case that he did not commit and which, furthermore, may not be considered due to the passage of time. “I have not worked for Yukos since 1999,” he told the court, “but all the crimes are linked to abuse of my position in Yukos.”

The investigation is deliberately misleading the court and the prosecutor’s office, in Lebedev’s opinion. “The judges of the Ingodinsky district court have each been reprimanded, some of them three times. Why I am being kept in prison? As soon I come out criminal charges against the investigators will be brought and confirmed sooner than those against me. I only use lawful means to solve all problems,” he told the judge, “and the investigators are afraid that I’ll go free.”