FT.com / World - Unbowed in face of ‘absurd’ charges

By Neil Buckley

Published: February 6 2008 22:03 | Last updated: February 6 2008 22:03

Gaunt, a little jaundiced, his hair greyer and sparser than when he was last seen in Moscow at his sentencing three years ago, Mikhail Khodorkovsky stood defiantly in a Siberian courtroom on Wednesday despite being on the ninth day of a hunger strike.

He had been brought from a pre-trial detention centre in Chita, a city 6,500km east of Moscow, to a nearby court for a hearing relating to embezzlement charges brought against him last year.

During a long break, Mr Khodorkovsky answered questions from the Financial Times and a scattering of his supporters, speaking through the beige-painted bars of the cage in which Russian courts house criminal defendants.

His voice fading occasionally, prompting him to gulp water from a bottle, Mr Khodorkovsky spoke of his concerns for himself, his family and Russia.

Asked about his health after several days on a “dry” hunger strike before he decided to accept water, he twice insisted he was ­normalno, the shrugging Russian equivalent of OK.

Mr Khodorkovsky said he planned to continue his hunger strike until his demands were met for Vasily Aleksanyan, one of his former senior managers at the Yukos energy group who is now on trial on separate embezzlement charges, to be moved from his Moscow prison to a civilian hospital.

Mr Aleksanyan has been diagnosed with Aids, cancer of the lymph glands, ­suspected tuberculosis, and is nearly blind. He has accused prosecutors of ­trying to force him to give false testimony against Mr Khodorkovsky in return for medical treatment.

“What other way was there?” Mr Khodorkovsky said on Wednesday of his decision to stop accepting food last week in support of Mr Aleksanyan. “My health is OK. I’m fully ready for a long bureaucratic procedure while they check Aleksanyan’s health.”

Mr Khodorkovsky was initially on a “dry” hunger strike but decided at the weekend to start accepting water after Mr Aleksanyan said his prison conditions had been improved.

A Moscow court on Wednesday suspended Mr Aleksanyan’s trial but said he would not be released from prison. The court said he should receive treatment in the prison hospital, but Mr Aleksanyan’s lawyers say the prison is unable to provide adequate conditions for the treatment he needs. Even the head of the prison wrote to the court saying he needed to be moved for special treatment.

Looking generally relaxed in the Chita court, the former business oligarch said the $28bn (€19bn, £14bn) embezzlement charges against him were so absurd it was difficult to mount an effective defence.

“I’m being accused of stealing all the oil produced by Yukos over six years. It will be interesting to see how they intend to prove that,” he said.

He admitted that when he arrived in Krasnokamensk prison after his sentencing he had been an object of curiosity. But he said inmates and local people had treated him better than ­Muscovites.

“Here the word ‘conscience’ has not yet disappeared,” he said. “Of course, to a certain extent, I am a being from another world, an alien [to other prisoners],” he said. “[I told them] ‘So you didn’t have a political prisoner here before? Well, now you have one. They were around before. Get used to that situation.’ ”

Mr Khodorkovsky was refused an application when in Krasnokamensk to teach mathematics to other inmates but, along with other prisoners, sewed shirts and gloves.

His arrival did seem to raise other prisoners’ awareness of their rights.

“I don’t think that I was responsible. But people understood that they could defend their rights by legal means. Previously, when there was a problem, there were protests etc. But when I came to the colony, the situation changed, in that commissions started to arrive constantly, and the prosecutor came.

“And the first time the prosecutor came, one person went to see him, and only to talk about his case, not about his imprisonment. And everyone looked at him like he was nuts.

“The second time the prosecutor came, there was a whole queue waiting for him, 40 people. So to a significant degree, life started to change.”

Since his transfer to Chita, a city of stolid Soviet-era architecture on the trans­Siberian railway where morning temperatures this week have been about -28°C, he has been reading 200 pages of documents a day to prepare for his new trial.

The former tycoon declined to comment on ­suggestions that he had embraced the Russian Orthodox faith.

“That’s a complicated question. I have thought a lot about this. And I’d rather keep it to myself.”

Mr Khodorkovsky said he worried most about his parents. “What’s important is how my parents feel, the rest is not important.”

The former head of the stricken oil group argued that Dmitry Medvedev, Vladimir Putin’s likely successor as president following elections next month, would face huge challenges restoring the rule of law in Russia. But he said that, despite the erosion of democracy, he was broadly optimistic about the country’s future.

“It’s a question of my ­personality. I can’t provide a lot of arguments for and against but, on the whole, I’m optimistic.”

Mr Khodorkovsky said China’s success with authoritarian capitalism was not a model for Russia. “Here in Chita ... if you ask people ‘Are you more like a Chinese person, or more like a European?’ Here I think people’s understanding is fairly unambiguous. We’re a European country. That’s how we developed. And the way forward for us is the European way.”