Posted on 10/20/2005 10:56:35 AM PDT by gobucks
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been sent to the wastes of Siberia to serve his 8-year sentence, authorities said on Thursday, sparking outrage among his defence lawyers and rights activists.
Khodorkovsky's supporters say the move to send him to the other side of the vast Russian Federation is a continuation of a Kremlin campaign to isolate him as a voluble critic of President Vladimir Putin's leadership and break him psychologically.
Penal officials said the 42-year-old oil tycoon, once Russia's richest man, had arrived at camp IK-10, near the border with China and 6,000 km from his native Moscow, to serve his sentence, imposed last May for fraud and tax evasion.
"It is a normal camp providing normal living conditions," Interfax news agency quoted Alexander Pleshkov, head of the local prison administration, as saying.
The tycoon's whereabouts had been the subject of intense speculation since he was transferred from his remand jail in Moscow after losing his appeal against conviction in September.
Supporters say Khodorkovsky, who built up the oil major YUKOS, is the victim of a Kremlin campaign to neutralise him as a political rival and break up his company. Russian officials say he is a common criminal who has tried to paint himself as a political martyr.
His confinement in IK-10 camp will put him a six-hour flight plus a seven-hour car ride from Moscow, and human rights bodies accused authorities of violating Russian law by sending him so far from his home and family.
"The law says that a general regime prisoner should serve his term somewhere close to his home. The Russian authorities are spitting on their own law," said Yevgeny Ikhlov of the All-Russian Movement for Human Rights.
"This is being done on purpose to complicate as much as possible Khodorkovsky's contacts with his family, his defence and with society. Khodorkovsky is a prominent public figure and prominent opposition ideologist and everything is being done to isolate him," Ikhlov told Reuters.
"I do not think it is a legitimate decision. When I see him I will have more to say," Anton Drel, one of Khodorkovsky's legal team, told Reuters by telephone.
ARCTIC CAMP FOR ASSOCIATE
Khodorkovsky's associate, Platon Lebedev, who was handed an identical jail sentence, has been sent to a prison camp in Yamalo-Nenets beyond the Arctic circle.
IK-10 camp, near Krasnokamensk, has a population of about 1,000 inmates, according to Khodorkovsky's press centre. Its original inmates in the 1960s helped build a uranium processing plant, though the camp now produces only textiles such as clothes and bedding.
Khodorkovsky's legal team was working out how to visit their client, RIA-Novosti agency reported.
"The road there is not an easy one. A six-hour flight and a seven-hour drive," said defence lawyer Genrikh Padva.
Though his confines for the next 8 years are far-flung, Khodorkovsky may feel some relief after staying for two years in an overcrowded Moscow pre-trial detention centre.
As a low-risk security prisoner sentenced for non-violent white collar crime, Khodorkovsky will be able to move relatively freely inside the prison territory.
Prison administration chief Pleshkov said there were no especially dangerous criminals in the camp, mainly those convicted of theft and fraud.
"There are no criminal bosses here," he said.
After two weeks of medical checks, Khodorkovsky would be attached to one of the teams of inmates and given the option of working.
(Additional reporting by Meg Clothier)
Copyright © 2005 Reuters
Well I bet he feels better now!!
A normal camp? As compared too what? Sounds like Putin still has the Gulags working overtime.
I can't believe he didn't flee before he was convicted.
That would suck....curious, though, what "medical checks" take two weeks....that's alot of probing
Like he couldn't offer a million dollar bribe to a camp worker group to let him just walk out the door?
Unlike most, he is in jail by choice.
" When I see him I will have more to say," Anton Drel, one of Khodorkovsky's legal team "
Better make sure he has a valid round trip ticket before he says too much.
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