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TwitterKhodorkovsky gets 14 year jail term
Former Yukos oil company CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky speaks in the defendants' cage just after a verdict during a court session in Moscow yesterday. Picture: AFP
Friday, December 31, 2010
A MOSCOW court yesterday sentenced Russia's former richest man Mikhail Khodorkovsky to 14 years in jail in his second fraud trial, in a verdict the defence said was ordered by his nemesis Vladimir Putin.
Under the terms of the verdict, the sentence means the jailed Yukos oil company founder and his co-accused Platon Lebedev will stay in jail until 2017, removing a key opponent of Putin from the political scene for years to come.
The two, already serving an eight year sentence from their first trial, do not qualify for a suspended term, judge Viktor Danilkin told the court.
The reading of the verdict in the packed courtroom was the culmination of the most controversial trial in Russia's post-Soviet history which critics said was staged simply to punish Khodorkovsky for daring to oppose Putin.
"May you and your offspring be damned!" one woman, apparently Khodorkovsky's mother, shouted as the verdict was read out. But the two defendants reacted calmly to the decision, an AFP correspondent in court said.
Lebedev was given an identical sentence, which fulfilled the demands of prosecutors without the slightest change.
"It's a cruel, shameful sentence which shows the absence of independent courts in Russia," said Lyudmila Alexeyeva, one of Russia's top rights activists.
"An independent court would never have given such a verdict in this absurd case," she told the Interfax news agency.
Taking into account time served since first his first arrest in 2003, the verdict means that the Yukos oil company founder and Lebedev will stay in jail until 2017, Khodorkovsky's official website said.
"This is not a sentence, this is a case of lawlessness," defence lawyer Yury Shmidt told reporters after the sentence which he vowed to appeal. "There was pressure from the executive branch which is now headed by Putin."
Judge Danilkin earlier this week convicted the pair in their second trial on money laundering and embezzlement charges, a verdict condemned by the United States and other European countries as selective prosecution.
"The correction of Khodorokvsky and Lebedev is possible only by way of their isolation from society," the judge told the court.
Russia's complex sentencing procedure required the judge to read out the hundreds of pages in the judgement after Monday's guilty verdict before giving his decision. In a scene sometimes bordring on farce, Danilkin hurried through the reading of the full verdict, keeping his eyes fixed on the document and not looking at the court, with his words frequently inaudible. Khodorkovsky has been in prison since being snatched off his private jet by Russian security agents in October 2003. His supporters have always alleged he was punished for daring to finance the opposition to Putin.AFP
Under the terms of the verdict, the sentence means the jailed Yukos oil company founder and his co-accused Platon Lebedev will stay in jail until 2017, removing a key opponent of Putin from the political scene for years to come.
The two, already serving an eight year sentence from their first trial, do not qualify for a suspended term, judge Viktor Danilkin told the court.
The reading of the verdict in the packed courtroom was the culmination of the most controversial trial in Russia's post-Soviet history which critics said was staged simply to punish Khodorkovsky for daring to oppose Putin.
"May you and your offspring be damned!" one woman, apparently Khodorkovsky's mother, shouted as the verdict was read out. But the two defendants reacted calmly to the decision, an AFP correspondent in court said.
Lebedev was given an identical sentence, which fulfilled the demands of prosecutors without the slightest change.
"It's a cruel, shameful sentence which shows the absence of independent courts in Russia," said Lyudmila Alexeyeva, one of Russia's top rights activists.
"An independent court would never have given such a verdict in this absurd case," she told the Interfax news agency.
Taking into account time served since first his first arrest in 2003, the verdict means that the Yukos oil company founder and Lebedev will stay in jail until 2017, Khodorkovsky's official website said.
"This is not a sentence, this is a case of lawlessness," defence lawyer Yury Shmidt told reporters after the sentence which he vowed to appeal. "There was pressure from the executive branch which is now headed by Putin."
Judge Danilkin earlier this week convicted the pair in their second trial on money laundering and embezzlement charges, a verdict condemned by the United States and other European countries as selective prosecution.
"The correction of Khodorokvsky and Lebedev is possible only by way of their isolation from society," the judge told the court.
Russia's complex sentencing procedure required the judge to read out the hundreds of pages in the judgement after Monday's guilty verdict before giving his decision. In a scene sometimes bordring on farce, Danilkin hurried through the reading of the full verdict, keeping his eyes fixed on the document and not looking at the court, with his words frequently inaudible. Khodorkovsky has been in prison since being snatched off his private jet by Russian security agents in October 2003. His supporters have always alleged he was punished for daring to finance the opposition to Putin.AFP
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