Chita Region Court will not give decision on extending Khodorkovsky’s detention until Wednesday

The Chita Region Court has deferred to Wednesday the announcement of its decision about extending Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s detention in custody until 2 February 2009. A spokesman for the Court told Interfax-Siberia that its response to the petition from the Investigative Committee of the RF Prosecutor General's office would be announced at 10 am local time (4 am Moscow Time).

During the course of the hearing on Tuesday the judge heard a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office and a defence attorney, studied the documents presented and then withdrew to reach a decision.

The Investigative Committee is demanding that Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s detention in the pre-trial remand centre be extended to 2 February 2009. The team of investigators justifies such a petition, as in the past, by the large volume of the criminal case and excludes the possibility of adopting a milder measure of restraint.

The defence called the arguments of the prosecution without foundation unproven. Defence attorney Simeon Rozenberg noted that this was the eighth time that Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s detention in the pre-trial remand centre has been extended: four times his detention has been prolonged by Chita’s Ingodinsky district court and four times by the Chita Region Court.

“The investigators continue to use the same arguments and their repetition has lost meaning. When parole was being considered for the first case, the investigation argued that it could not be applied because of the second case; it then argued that the measure of restraint could not be altered for the second case because of the application for parole,” said Rozenberg during the hearing.

The investigation into the second criminal case was completed in February 2007, Rozenberg pointed out in court, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky could not interfere with that investigation as the investigators alleged. “Khodorkovsky is accused of an economic crime and cannot be considered a danger to society,” his attorney emphasised.

Of the 168 volumes of the criminal case Khodorkovsky was thoroughly acquainted with 161 and partially with a further two. It would not require long, the defence considered, for him to complete his reading of the documentation.

“Khodorkovsky has spent more than two thirds of his five years since his arrest in the pre-trial detention centre,” said his attorney. “This is the harshest and cruellest measure of restraint.”

Mikhail Khodorkovsky supported his lawyer in the courtroom. “Prolonging my detention violates my rights. The pre-trial detention centre is a prison regime when I could become acquainted with the new case in the penal colony,” he said.

(Interfax, 7 October 2008)