Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s life in Karelia
Just few kilometers from the border to Finland, Russia’s once richest man is spending his days doing physical labor – and reading and writing – in a prison camp.
As the European Court of Human Rights this week ruled that the authorities’ campaign against Yukos was not politically motivated and rejected former company shareholders’ claim for a 98 billion USD compensation, former Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky was busy chopping wood and dismantling metal constructions in the Segezha prison camp in the Republic of Karelia.
As BarentsObserver reported, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was moved to the prison in June this year after a court in Moscow sentenced him to an additional five years in jail. Khodorkovsky was first jailed in 2003 on tax evasion charges.
Read also:Russia sends Khodorkovsky to Karelia
However, the situation could have been worse, lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant says to newspaper Karelskaya Gubernya. In Karelia, Khodorkovsky has got more time with his family and the relations both with the prison management and the other inmates are better, he says. During Khodorkovsky’s earlier stay in the Krasnokamenskaya prison in the far eastern region of Chita, the prisoner experienced several threatening situations, some of them life-threatening.
Still, also in Karelia, Khodorkovsky has his problems. After only three months in Karelia, Khodorkovsky had got two warnings from the local prison authorities. The first time for “disrespectful attitude to work” and the second time for “having been in an unauthorized place without permission”, Karelskaya Gubernya reports.
According to the lawyer Klyuvgant, both warnings were groundless and will eventually make it harder for Khodorkovsky to get an early release.
The most important thing for Khodorkovsky now is to do what he cannot be without, says Klyuvgant. -That is reading and writing. According to the lawyer, Khodorkovsky has written tens of volumes and reads “an enormous quantity of books”. He also receives hundreds of letters from all over the world, the lawyer says.
While Khodorkovsky is locked up in Karelia, his former business associate Platon Lebedev is in a prison in the neighboring region of Arkhangelsk.
Russia’s Supreme Court this month ruled that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were illegally held in a Moscow pre-trial detention center for three months during their second trial, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reports. However, that ruling is today unlikely to help the prisoners, who in any case will have to remain behind bars.
As a matter of fact, the prison conditions are unlikely to improve during the two men’s stay in the Barents Region. Last week, an Arkhangelsk regional court ruled against a parole appeal filed by Lebedev.
