Kommersant: Mikhail Khodorkovsky Got Lost On the Way

// …to the law security prison facility
By yesterday evening the lawyers of Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev were still unable to find their clients, who were transferred from Moscow on Sunday. The attorneys say that they are not worrying as much about the final destination of the inmates, but they would like to know where they are now, how many more stops they have to go through and how they are taking the trip. The Federal Penitentiary Service (FPS), using its lawful right, keeps the silence.
The representatives of FPS told Kommersant that information about the movements of the inmates is not secret, but it is designed only for the internal agency use. In other words, only a limited amount of people know it. Only one representative from the inmate can be included in this circle. The prisoner, according to the FPS officers, chooses one trustee already during the investigation. The name, address and phone number of this trustee is registered in the case file for the suspect. And if the suspect is convicted and becomes a prisoner, the trustee information is recorded in the inmate’s personal file.

In this particular case, the trustees of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are their wives. However, according to the attorneys both women yesterday did not know the location of their husbands. And there is nobody and nowhere to complain to – even the lawyers admit that FPS follows the law.

The head of Moscow prison Matrosskaya Tishina Fikret Tagiev, who sent Khodorkovsky and Lebedev to a different prison facility, had to notify the relatives in the same day or in the next day if the transfer was made late night. The law does not require the prison administration to call to the trustees – the notification is sent by mail. Tagiev, according to the attorneys, has sent the letter, but when it will arrive and if it will arrive at all, is not his business. Taking into the consideration that the letter even within the Moscow could be delivered several days, the lawyers of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are planning to find out about their dependents’ fate on Wednesday or Thursday.

If this will not happen, the inmates might let to know about themselves only in the end of the month. “After the arrival to the prison facility, all inmates are going through two-week quarantine, “Oleg Trunov, head of the Internet site Arestant.ru (Inmate). “During this procedure the prisoners are being checked by the medics, and also, who was doing want type of job outside of the jail, with whom inmate can work together, with whom he can live in the same quarters, and so on. While the quarantine is still in effect, the head of the prison facility writes to the relatives of newly arrived inmate, where he puts the serial number, address and phone number of the facility. After the quarantine is over, the prisoner himself can call his relatives and even ask for their visit.”

The attorneys think that it is no point to guess now where both prisoners are. In theory, it is possible to suggest that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev would be kept in Moscow Region or not far from it. For the officers of FPS does not make sense to break the Criminal Code, which indicates that the convict should do his time in the area of the Russian Federation, where he was residing or committed the crime. Besides, it is easier to bring Khodorkovsky and Lebedev to Moscow for new interrogations if they are in the Central Region.

From the other side, according to the lawyers, the same Criminal Code gives FPS an opportunity to take the inmate to the far end of Russia, “if the closest prison facilities are full” or “not designed for his containment.” In that case, if the inmate suddenly will be needed by the General Prosecution Office, he can always be transferred back – the amount of time spent on the way does not matter, because the travel time is included into the prison term.

“I think, this is artificially created secrecy,” Evgeny Baru, the attorney of Platon Lebedev, told Kommersant. “The heads of the FPS decided to take my client through the all “circles of hell” on the way to the new facility, and it is understandable, they do not want any publicity. For that matter, I am personally interested not where Lebedev and Khodorkovsky are being taken, but where are they now and how they feel.”

By Sergey Mashkin

Kommersant, 10.12.2005