New Khodorkovsky Trial Presents Test for Medvedev (Bloomberg)
“In this trial we’re dealing with a president who has attacked the very legal nihilism that we identified in the first trial,” Robert Amsterdam said in London today in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “Given that public stand of the Russian president, he has to be seen, and the government has to be seen, to comport with certain of the basics, at least, of what would appear to be fair process.”
Arrests as Jailed Russian Tycoon Back in Court (Reuters)
Police arrested 10 supporters shouting “freedom for politicalprisoners” as fallen Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky appeared incourt on Tuesday on new charges of embezzlement and money laundering. (…)
Armed guards brought Khodorkovsky, wearing jeans and carrying ablack briefcase, in a van to the Khamovnichesky court in Moscow — thefirst time he has appeared in public in the capital since 2005. Asupporter threw white roses toward him.
EU Observer Fears Unfair Khodorkovsky Trial (EU Business)
A European Union legal observer said Tuesday there is “absolutely noreason” to believe that the second trial of Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky will be fair.
“Thearbitrariness of the state’s influence on the latest trial is clear,”said former German justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger,who has been assigned by the Council of Europe to observe the case.
awyers defending in the courtroom the former CEO ofthe defunct oil corporation Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and the CEO ofYukos’s financial vehicle MENATEP, Platon Lebedev, have recused twopublic prosecutors attending the hearings of a new criminal caseagainst the two men at the Khamovniki district court in Moscow.
In an explanation for the move, Lebedev’s defenderVladimir Krasnov told reporters he and other lawyers had recused thepublic prosecutors Valery Loktin and Dmitry Shokhin, since they knewthe latter men’s line of conduct at the previous hearings.
“For Medvedev, the situation is very interesting.Because while this is the second Khodorkovsky trial, it is the firstone when Medvedev is president,” Aleksandr Osovtsov, a member of theopposition group Solidarity, tells RFE/RL’s Russian Service.
“Thisis a test of all his talk about how freedom is better than the lack offreedom, about making courts more independent,” he adds. “It is amoment of truth.”