Whether to prolong Platon Lebedev’s detention in custody

On Friday Platon Lebedev’s lawyers requested, at a hearing of the Chita Region Court, that the petition to extend their client’s detention in custody until 2 February 2009 be rejected.

“The investigators have no grounds for extending detention, let alone refuting the arguments of the defence,” Lebedev’s attorneys declared in court. They consider that the arguments of the investigators that there are material, judicial and procedural grounds for keeping their client in the pre-trial detention centre are not convincing. They add that his period in detention has been wrongly calculated.

“The period of detention should be calculated from 21 December 2006, from the day that Platon Lebedev was moved to the detention centre,” noted the lawyers. “Yet it is said to have begun on 8 February 2007 when the Ingodinsky district court took a decision about Lebedev’s detention in custody.”

Earlier Platon Lebedev declared that he could not have committed all the deeds with which he is charged since at that time he was either in the detention centre in Moscow, or abroad, or not working for Yukos as was confirmed by notes in his employment record. “Since 1999 I have not worked for any Russian organisation whereas all the crimes are linked to the use of my position in Yukos,” said Lebedev in court.

“A decision on the petition of the investigators for prolonging the detention in custody of Lebedev will be announced on Monday,” said the judge.

(Interfax, 17.10.2008)