From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 10/29/2007 9:53 AM
Yahoo! News
Court: Russia violated oilman's rights
Thu Oct 25, 1:32 PM ET
Russia violated the rights of a former top manager at Yukos, the country's largest oil company before it was declared bankrupt, by arresting him in 2003, Europe's human rights court ruled Thursday.
Platon Lebedev, a business partner of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was sentenced in 2005 to nine years in jail on charges of fraud and tax evasion in a politically charged case that rights activists said underlined a lack of justice in Russia. The sentence was later reduced to eight years.
Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, and Lebedev were arrested amid a wide-ranging investigation that eventually put Yukos into state hands.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled Lebedev's rights to liberty and security were violated during the arrest and subsequent pretrial detention and ordered Moscow to pay him $4,269 in damages and $9,961 for legal costs.
The court ruled that Russia violated Lebedev's rights by keeping him in pretrial detention even after it expired, that both Lebedev and his lawyer were wrongly excluded from the detention hearing, and that two appeals proceedings were too slow.
Khodorkovsky never joined Lebedev in taking a case to the Strasbourg-based court, which rules over human rights law but has no power to force Russia to release the men.
The Russian charges against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev centered on the 1994 privatization of a company making a fertilizer component, one of the deals that helped Khodorkovsky build his empire.
Prosecutors said the pair were part of an "organized group" that won a 20 percent stake in the company, Apatit, through a plan involving shell structures that bid for the shares.
A senior European Union lawmaker demanded that Portugal's prime minister raise the imprisonment of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev with Russian President Vladimir Putin during an EU-Russia summit Friday.
Portugal, which holds the rotating EU presidency, chairs the EU-Russia summit.
Graham Watson, leader of the Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament, said Khodorkovsky should be eligible for parole under Russian law, but new charges, involving accusations that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev stole property worth $34.3 billion from Yukos subsidiaries, mean he cannot be released.
Khodorkovsky, who was arrested four years ago Thursday, and Lebedev, who was arrested several months earlier, have now served more than half of their sentences, which ordinarily would make them eligible for early release.
But prison authorities have taken no chances, according to a lawyer for Khodorkovsky.
On Oct. 11, Khodorkovsky was accused of breaking prison rules by not keeping his hands locked and behind his back while returning from a walk, and was formally reprimanded, lawyer Yuri Shmidt said.
"It is an obstacle to his early release," Shmidt said. "We were sure the authorities would carry out some kind of provocation so they would have a formal excuse."
Khodorkovsky denies breaking the rules, his lawyer said.
Shmidt said they would appeal the reprimand. In three previous cases, a court overturned a prison reprimand.
Lebedev also received a reprimand shortly before the end of the first half of his sentence, the lawyer said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071025/ap_on_re_eu/european_court_russia&printer=1;_ylt=Akk5yviRf0VWHsWhDplk_IpbbBAF
