Bakhmina did submit a request for a pardon, of course. Now an official document confirms it.

Irina Reznik, Vedomosti, 01.11.2008

On Thursday Yury Kalinin, head of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FPS), told journalists: “No statement has been received from Bakhmina either by the administration of the penal colony or the pardons commission. It is being reported that, supposedly, she submitted her request earlier and it was registered in the hospital where she is now. Such things have never been registered in hospital,” said Kalinin, “it’s an institution of temporary residence. In the penal colony where she was imprisoned nothing of that kind happened.”

An official from the presidential administration also assured Vedomosti that the request for a pardon did not exist.

On Friday, 31 October, however, Bakhmina’s lawyers received official confirmation from the administration of LPU-21, the hospital for Mordovia’s prisoners, that the written request had in fact existed. A letter from Oleg Klishkov, the hospital director says that Bakhmina submitted her request for a pardon on Wednesday, 22 October, at 3 pm and that same day it was entered in the register for such requests and petitions. (Vedomosti has a copy of Klishkov’s letter.) On Friday, 24 October Bakhmina submitted a statement recalling her request for a pardon and this was granted on 25 October.

“Immediately after Svetlana put in her petition for a pardon we sent an official request to the hospital LPU-21, asking them to confirm that her petition had been registered,” said her lawyer Roman Golovkin. “We only received an answer this Friday.” He does not know the reasons why she withdrew her request. Since she had submitted it over a week ago her lawyers have not been allowed to see their client.

The director of the FPS press service Valery Zaitsev said he would “not comment on Bakhmina’s private life”. We were unable to contact Mr Kalinin.

Bakhmina was the first of those convicted as part of the Yukos affair to request a pardon from President Medvedev. A couple of days later she was transferred from LPU-21, the hospital for prisoners, to a civilian hospital run by the FPS in Mordovia in a place called Yavas. This was done on the personal instructions of Victor Malkov, head of the Mordovia FPS, although there were no medical reasons for the transfer, a doctor at LPU-21 admitted to Vedomosti.