Kommersant: "There is human inside of him"

How Mikhail Khodorkovsky was met in the correctional facility

Doing the Time

The quarantine for inmate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is doing his time in the correctional labor facility YG 14/10 (town of Krasnokamensk, Chita Region) is over. The inmates, who are ranked as “criminal authorities” in prison, characterized the former oligarch as a “man” –one who is supposed to work. However, there is no work at the correctional facility. “The guys are thinking that there is something human inside of him,” the criminal authorities inside of the correctional facility told Kommersant correspondent Sergey Dyupin about Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

The punishment by the transfer



People in Krasnokamensk started to suspect that soon some kind of VIP-inmate would arrive at YG 14/10. However nobody, including the staff of the correctional facility, knew who and when the person was supposed to arrive. “Sometime in the beginning of September we started to see high ranking people from Chita, Novosibirsk and Moscow,” I’ve been told in local hotel “Central,” by the way the only hotel in town that provides soap and toilet paper in the rooms. “All these people had ranks not lower than a colonel and were flashing IDs from different law-enforcement organizations – Prosecution, Ministry of Justice, FSB. Because all our tenants were going into the correctional facility, we realized that there are some changes coming.” I learned in the correctional facility why the colonels were coming to Krasnokamensk. “We had a severe check up for a whole month,” one of the officers from YG 14/10 told me. “The inspection was working at several directions simultaneously. They were reading everybody files. They looked at all engineering installations. They were happy with the results and told us that we should wait for a ‘guest.’ On the question who is ‘the guest,’ one of the inspectors right before the departure said: Lebedev. After that the whole facility, as well as whole city, started to wait for Platon Lebedev’s arrival.” As the officer explained, the “sincerity” of the General was nothing more than a tactical trick. The officers from the Federal Penitentiary Service (FPS) were putting intentional clouds so nobody could make malicious plans against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev during their transfer. For the same reason the guarding of the inmates during the transfer was not entrusted to the regional changing convoys. From the gates of the Matrosskaya Tishina Prison and all way to the gates of YG 14/10 in Krasnokamensk, Khodorkovsky was guarded by the Special Convoy of FPS. It is still unclear how the former head of the YUKOS was transported. According to the official version from the leadership of FPS, the former oligarch had no different treatment than other convicts. In other words, together with other inmates he was loaded into the special prison railroad cart and went to the East – across whole wide country with the usual stop in Vladimir, Yekaterinburg and other prison transportation hubs. In these hubs the convicts are sorted by groups, which are being sent to different locations. Allegedly, the last hub for Khodorkovsky was Chita.

On the Manchurian Railroad Branch, which goes from Chita to China, there is only one prison railroad car. “The car is always attached right behind the locomotive,” one of the officers, who guards this railroad branch, explained to me. “The car is always attached to the passenger train #601 and #602 Chita-Priargunsk and all the inmates to the Krasnokamensk correctional labor facility travel in this car. Train #601 comes everyday but the prisoners are being delivered only four times per months. On October 18, the train came to Krasnokamensk without the special railroad car. We were unloading the prison car a day before and Khodorkovsky wasn’t there. Theoretically, he could be brought with the special convoy of three officers in the regular passenger train, but we hadn’t had such convoys already for a long time.” According to the FPS on the last stage of the trip, the Federal Agents decided to trick alleged malicious enemies of Khodorkovsky and delivered the former oligarch from Chita by a car. If this was the true, then Khodorkovsky was already severely punished - even before he started to do his time in the correctional facility. I rode the same route on the passenger seat of old Toyota, which I hired in Chita. There is no solid asphalt in these 600 kilometers. Every 20 meters or so there are big holes in the pavement with sand in the bottom. If car goes with a good speed – and you have to drive fast if you want to get there before the dark- the wheels regularly hit these holes and the suspension jars the passenger pretty severely. As a result, after the first 100 km the passenger feels like he was blinded, dumbfounded and dragged on a washboard. After 300 km the passenger doesn’t care anymore about the environment and by the end of the trip a person is totally zombified. During one of these stops, in the cloud of dust created by the holes, I heard a song.

When the dust settled down I saw a man sitting next to his car with a tape recorder. He asked us, “Going to Khodorkovsky?” after he found out that we got lost. He offered us to come out from the car and pointed somewhere to the west. Looking in the direction of his hand, we started to look on the hills lit by the last rays of the sun and suddenly we say a miracle. From behind one of the hills we saw a huge letter Y then letter K started to come out and soon enough the whole word YUKOS appeared on the horizon and disappeared again. Then between two other hills we saw a train a diesel and each rail car had a huge word YUKOS written on the side. Go after the train and you won’t get lost said the man with the tape recorder.

Behind the five fences

We couldn’t find out about the fate of the famous inmate at YG 14-10. They did not let me further than the entrance, saying it is Sunday and the commander of the correctional facility is off and nobody except him can let the media into the perimeter. However, they could not prohibit us from walking around the labor facility with the cameraman. At the same time, they recommended not approaching closer than 25 meters because “it agitates the guards of the perimeter.” This was enough to find out that inmate Khodorkovsky is guarded quite well. Today he is separated from the outside world by at least five fences: from regular barbed wire, concertina barbed wire, and meshed barbed wire. Besides on the top of the cement fence there are wires with 380 volt electricity running through them. Between these fences there is also control sand strip to track the steps of escapes and huge Caucus shepherd dogs running lose. The dog house is located every 50 meters and of course in the corners of the perimeters there are watch towers with armed guards. As the knowledgeable people insist, the soldiers without any warning give a shot in the air when somebody approaches the perimeter from outside and tries to throw something over the fences. There were also rumors that in some cases some visitors were leaving for home in jeeps with hoods and tailgates riddled by bullets. And these visitors don’t ever have the chance to send some packages bypassing the officers of the correctional facility. We had a chance to find out ourselves the effectiveness of the guards. While we were walking around the perimeter, nobody was bothering us. However, as soon as our cameraman pulled out the camera and tried to make a shot, we heard the distinctive sound of the gun lock and short command, “Stop!” Several minutes after, we were quite politely delivered by a convoy of three soldiers with assault rifles to the gate office of the correctional facility. Soon, a Krasnokamensk police patrol arrived after a call made by the guards. The police patrol took us into the precinct, checked out documents and released us after finding out that there was no crime in our actions. We did not try to penetrate the perimeter. We were just trying to make pictures and there is no law that says we cannot do so from outside. We thanked the law enforcement officers after they drove us to the center of the town.

The wood processing and sewing facilities are closed and the pig sty is on its last leg

I was told about Khodorkovsky’s first days of imprisonment at YG 14/10 by Natalya Terekhova, head of the Krasnokamensk office of Chita’s attorney’s board. According to her, she visited Khodorkovsky last Wednesday and Thursday and provided a consultation. She did not receive any complaints from the client. “When lawyer or doctor are coming to visit a person at the correctional facility, the first question they ask is whether there is anything that bothers you,” the attorney said. “I did the same. Both time Khodorkovsky said he did not have any problems. It looked to me like he was in a normal physical and spiritual mood.” According to Terekhova asked to see a lawyer only to let know about his location to people in Moscow and to find out about the rules of the correctional facility. “Khodorkovsky as an educated person was interested, for instance, how often he can receive newspapers and magazines and what quantity. We agreed he will not have a problem with that. He already received a catalog and he is selecting the media that he would like to subscribe to. So far, he picked up about 100 names of the publications,” the lawyer said. Besides, the attorney also pointed out that Khodorkovsky was also interested in the financial side of his life in the correctional facility—how often and how much he can use his money. They did not discuss a possible job that the formal oligarch will be doing. In the meantime, Khodorkovsky most likely will have problems with employment. The problem is that labor in YG 14/10 correctional facility is not forced, but rather a hard-earned right of few inmates and people who live on probation outside of the perimeter. The inmates get to work only for good behavior. Although the money is very small, most of the inmates except the professional criminals who consider work as a shame, are really willing to work. Otherwise, they would die here from boredom.

“Of course they pay almost nothing,” a former prisoner of 14/10 told me. “By the end of the term after all the deductions, it was about 1500. But it was still enough to treat local kids who meet all inmates leaving the gates of the prison. But now everybody is walking out from 14/10 almost naked. They don’t even have enough money to buy a railroad ticket to Chita. And these poor guys are going to the railway station to beg for a free ride. And of course nobody gives it to them. The municipal authorities are usually spending their own money just to remove these people from the town and buy them a ticket.”

The problem is that inmates from 14/10 do not work in the town’s workplaces anymore. They never worked in the uranium mining plant and management of the neighboring cement plant prefers recently to use labor of prisoners on probation because there is a bunch of them around here and they work hard for the money. The small industry that once was blooming inside the correctional facility is closed. For instance, the wood processing shop is shut down, the big and small pig sties are on their last leg. There is not much left from the loading and unloading dock of the metal yard—three rusted cranes. Sometimes inmates climb on top of them just to take a look at Krasnokamensk, which his located only two kilometers away, before the guards will order them down. Until recently there was a sewing shop, but it was closed also. The three-story building of the former sewing shop is now being remodeled into isolation facilities. However, this renovation is done by free construction workers. The labor loving inmates can only clean after the construction workers and sweep the yard.

“Khodorkovsky is OK in there”

The most complete information about the famous inmate I was able to receive from the criminal “authorities” who are supervising YG 14/10. These two men who for understandable reasons asked not to be named and for the precise details of their prison supervision revealed, persuaded me that “Khodorkovsky is OK in there.” At least so far, they said. “Together with him there were about 20 people in the quarantine,” the “authorities” explained. “As far as we know, after the check for the snitches, all from this quarantine would go prison as the “men” and not the “authorities.” This oligarch is OK so far. The main thing in prison is to maintain the dignity and everything else would be good.”

Because, these two men from the criminal “authorities” did not watch closely the “men” quarantine, they agreed to help me and made a telephone call to the “authorities” right in the correctional labor facility 14/10. They could not connect with the top guy but quickly got the hold of his deputy. “What’s up, brother. I wanted to inquire about Khodorkovsky. Do you know about him?” one of my “authorities” asked, after the ritual of special prison greetings. “Everything is OK with him. The guys were saying that he talked with people normally and was cool. The guys think that he has something human inside of him. But this is just preliminary conclusion. When he starts to live in jail, than we’ll see what is going to happen.”

by Sergey Dyupin

Kommersant, 10.24.2005