A European court on Tuesday censured Russia over the imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky but refused to back claims the arrest was politically motivated, as its former richest man requested parole. The supporters of Khodorkovsky, who turned Yukos into Russia's biggest oil firm before it was seized and broken up by the state, have long argued he was imprisoned as punishment for daring to challenge strongman Vladimir Putin.
The European Court of Human Rights ordered Russia to pay 10,000 euros ($14,380) in damages to the tycoon and 14,543 euros ($21,000) in costs after finding violations in the conditions of his arrest and subsequent detention. However, the Strasbourg-based court refused to back his central argument that the case is "politically motivated", it said in a statement.
The decision came just after the Preobrazhensky district court in Moscow announced it had received a request from Khodorkovsky for parole and amid tentative signs of a shift in the attitude towards the case by the authorities. "I ask you to examine the issue of my parole," Khodorkovsky said in a request to a Moscow court, posted on his website khodorkovsky.ru late on Monday.
"The articles under which I have been convicted provide for this possibility once half the sentence has been completed," he added. Khodorkovsky has been in detention since 2003 when he was arrested on his jet on the runway of a Siberian airport. The former magnate and his co-accused Platon Lebedev are serving an eight- year sentence issued in 2005 for tax evasion and are set to stay in jail until 2016 after receiving another 13-year sentence for fraud.
Ruling on a complaint first made by Khodorkovsky in February 2004, the court said he had been kept in "inhuman and degrading" conditions between August and October 2005. "In particular, he had had less than 4 square metres of personal space in his cell, and the sanitary conditions had been appalling," it said, adding his pre-trial detention was also extended twice without justification in 2004.
But even though Western states, led by the United States, have complained of a "selective prosecution" of Khodorkovsky, the court declined to back his complaint that his case was politically motivated. While there might be "some suspicion as to... the real intent" of the Russian authorities, "incontestable proof" that the case was politically motivated was not presented, it said. "The court, persuaded that the charges against Mr Khodorkovsky had amounted to a 'reasonable suspicion'... held that there had been no violation," it said.