Posted on 02/06/2007 4:16:38 AM PST by familyop
About a year and a half ago, Marina Khodorkovsky, the long-suffering mother of jailed oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, said that she had little optimism for her son's fate as long as Russia's President Vladimir Putin and his team remained in power. Mother knows best, as they say.
Russian prosecutors are cobbling together more charges against Khodorkovsky, which means the former Yukos chief's jail sentence could yet be beefed up. This will put an end to the politically ambitious tycoon's hopes of release from jail before the 2008 presidential elections. Khodorkovsky was convicted in May 2005 after a trial widely seen as Kremlin-engineered punishment for his political ambitions and a state quest for control of the oil industry.
On Monday, Khodorkovsky's lawyer revealed that his client would now be tried on money-laundering charges. The crime is punishable in Russia by up to 10 years in prison. "One thing all lawyers agree on is that the new charges are absurd," Khodorkovsky's lawyer Karina Moskalenko was quoted as saying. "They are crazy from start to end."
Under Russian law, Khodorkovsky could apply for early release from October this year, when he will have served half of his sentence.
Khodorkovsky's further punishment comes as no surprise to those following his fortunes. He has caused plenty of mischief on the inside. Like the nineteenth century authors, politicians and narodniks who were packed off over the Urals to a place where they couldn't cause trouble, Khodorkovsky hauled a trunkful of books along with him to pen a dissertation while serving his prison term. However, one of his first acts of sedition was to go on a hunger strike.
He also said he was chewing over the possibility of running for parliament, knowing that the revelation of any political ambitions would be anathema to the Kremlin. Many spectators think such claims are a double-edged sword for the disgraced tycoon. As Putin seeks ways to keep Khodorkovky incarcerated and gagged, he simultaneously reveals a fear of his prisoner.
Putin should not be so wary. Analysts say Khodorkovsky, who made a fortune privatizing former Soviet Union assets in the early 1990s, is unpopular among voters and has no chance of becoming a presidential candidate.
Russia's current prison system may be nothing compared to Stalin's atrocious gulag archipelago, yet detention at the Kremlin's pleasure is no picnic. Last year, Khodorkovsky suffered a temporary transfer to solitary confinement as punishment for possession of Justice Ministry documents on inmates' rights. A city court apparently agreed with his lawyers' arguments that he was entitled to have the documents in his cell, saying they were not secret and had been published in the media.
Khodorkovsky was also forced into lead an eremitic existence after committing the relatively venial sin of drinking tea in an unauthorized place.
He's also had to endure dicey cell mates along with the snarling dogs, watery porridge, rats and icy toilet seats. Last April, Khodorkovsky awoke in the middle of the night with his face covered in blood after being stabbed by fellow cellmate. The country's iron-hearted Prison Service claimed Khodorkovsky suffered "a scratch on his nose" while quarreling with another inmate. Many believed the objective of the attack was not to kill Khodorkovsky but to disfigure him.
He apparently refused to rat on his assailant because he believed his fellow inmate was not in full possession of his senses. His attorney opined it would be unfair to expect his client to break the prisoners' code, but argued that authorities had enough information to open a criminal case into the assault. "Khodorkovsky's defense team has no illusions about the real organizers of this crime and is determined in accordance with the law to obtain all the details," his attorney said.
The Kremlin has always denied that its treatment of Khodorkovsky is politically motivated.
Wonder what Mr. McCormack thinks about the trial of Scooter Libbey?
Anyone who seriously thinks there is the rule of law in Russia delusional.
Actually, there is one and only one law that works in Russia and that is the Law of Gravitation.
I'm reasonably certain that the laws of physics apply. And I'm darned certain that the Law of Unintended Consequences also applies.
L
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