On September 5 the Education, Science, Culture, Human Rights and Citizens’ Appeals Committee of the Czech Senate considered a draft resolution on the Khodorkovsky case prepared by Mr. Khodorkovsky’s lawyers. According to a report from the Regnum news agency, lawyer Dean Peroff emphasized in a speech the political motivations behind the case, the sloppiness and unfairness of the trial and the failure of the Russian government to ensure due process - all of which resulted in the ex-oligarch being sent to a uranium-mining area in Siberia. The draft resolution presented for discussion is said to state that Khodorkovsky is a political prisoner and that his conviction was unlawful. It also contains an appeal to the Russian authorities to observe the Constitution and to permit a delegation from the Czech Senate to visit Krasnokamensk. The lawyer recalled that some time previously a similar resolution had been adopted by the lower chamber of the Spanish parliament, and that ex-Presidents of a number of countries - Poland, Brazil, Albania and several others - had signed an appeal to the Russian authorities concerning the Khodorkovsky case. A spokeswoman for the Czech Foreign Ministry who attended the hearing said that the resolution in the case might cast a slight shadow over Russian-Czech relations in the run-up to the official visit to Prague of the head of the Russian government, scheduled for 2007. ‘For all this, the case is one of a number of occurrences in Russia causing concerns abroad and being carefully watched by the Czech Foreign Ministry and the European Union’, the Regnum news agency quotes her as saying. Czech senator Martin Mejstrik described as a small victory the fact that the resolution had even been considered within the Senate’s walls. According to the Senator, this sort of document makes many people uncomfortable, since no-one wants a run-in with the Russian authorities. Committee members in the end decided to postpone consideration of the resolution in the Mikhail Khodorkovsky case, so that the question could be looked into more carefully and Russia’s official position on ‘such an important issue’ could be established. It is possible that the desire to ‘look into the problem more carefully’ will require a trip by Czech parliamentarians to Russian Krasnokamensk, where Mikhail Khodorkovsky is currently serving sentence.

(from Regnum, 05.09.2006)