Russian oligarch-turned-dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky today had his prison sentence extended until 2017 following a trial widely condemned as politically motivated.
The sentence is the latest example of authoritarians taking advantage of the holiday season to violate human rights.
Moscow judge Viktor Danilkin ordered Khodorkovsky to serve 14 years in prison, extending his current eight-year term. He said that Khodorkovsky and co-defendant Platon Lebedev could not be reformed without “isolation from society.”
This latest conviction keeps Khodorkovsky “nicely inside prison right through the next presidential election,” notes one observer, while still presenting the Kremlin with a dilemma as “the longer he stays in prison, the more of a political issue he becomes.”
Most observers believe that the verdict reflects Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s will and confirms the weakness of President Dmitri Medvedev who has been able to do little to meet his commitment to rein in Russia’s legal nihilism or advance his agenda of incremental modernization.
“Putin signaled to the court who today is the boss and who today decides Khodorkovsky’s fate and life,” said Yury Schmidt, a leading Russian human rights lawyer on the former oligarch’s defense team. The severity of the sentence showed that Putin had called the shots in the case.
“The full sentence of 14 years would indicate the end of Medvedev’s modernization,” said Leon Aron, director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “You cannot talk about liberalization when the rule of law is so shamefully betrayed.”
The U.S. is “concerned by the allegations of serious due process violations, and what appears to be an abusive use of the legal system for improper ends,” said a US State Department spokesman.
“The Russian government cannot nurture a modern economy without also developing an independent judiciary that serves as an instrument for furthering economic growth, ensuring equal treatment under the law, and advancing justice in a predictable and fair way.”
The Kremlin began to persecute Khodorovsky when he began funding pro-democracy groups and candidates critical of Putin. His prosecution was widely perceived as a warning to other Russian business figures to stay out of politics.
“There is a widespread understanding that Khodorkovsky violated the tacit rules of the game: If you keep out of politics, you can line your pockets as much as you desire,” said a diplomatic cable from December 2009.
“Most Russians believe the Khodorkovsky trial is politically motivated; they simply do not care that it is,” according to The Moscow Times’ account of the cable, titled “Rule of Law Lipstick on a Political Pig.”
As The Economist notes, “anyone still believing that the prospects for liberalization in Russia remained alive will find it difficult to maintain their optimism today.”
