Today AFP is running a story on an interview given by a former Mikhail Khodorkovsky prison work supervisor to Kommersant-Vlast magazine, in which he declares the attempt to frame the former head of Yukos for sexual assault was “complete nonsense.” This blog featured an interview with the prisoner, Denis Yurinsky, about a year ago by Grigory Pasko (which I will be reposting).
Accusations that jailed Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky sexually assaulted a fellow inmate are “complete nonsense,” an ex-prisoner who supervised him said in an interview published Tuesday.
The ex-prisoner, Denis Yurinsky, alleged that the Russian authorities had pushed Khodorkovsky’s former cellmate, Alexander Kuchma, to accuse the tycoon of sexual assault in a lawsuit that goes to trial this week.
“I am convinced … that Kuchma was simply put up to write this statement, so it would help smear (Khodorkovsky’s) parole application,” Yurinsky told Kommersant-Vlast magazine, calling the lawusit “complete nonsense.”
Yurinsky said he was going public to defend Khodorkovsky, the former head of the Yukos oil company and once Russia’s richest man, whom he had supervised in a sewing workshop in the Siberian prison where the men were detained.