There are no further grounds for detaining their client, his attorneys insist. On Wednesday Lebedev will address the court and it will consider its verdict.

Meanwhile Lebedev and his lawyers have successfully requested that an entire range of documents, assiduously ignored hitherto by those in charge, be added to the case files. In particular, this concerns the expert assessments offered in The New Times by Yegor Gaidar and Vladimir Milov which, in the words of Vladimir Krasnov, contain “sharp and well-informed critiques of the position adopted by the Prosecutor General's office”.

On Tuesday the Chita Region Court continued to examine the request of the Investigative Committee that Platon Lebedev’s detention in custody be prolonged until 2 November 2008.

His defence team submitted five petitions, demanding that the evidence for the accusations which form the grounds for the extension be presented. In particular, they demanded that the prosecutor’s office present to the court evidence that Platon Lebedev had misappropriated 38% of the shares in the Eastern Oil Company (VNK). “The assertion concerning misappropriation of the VNK shares does not conform to reality and has not been supported by evidence,” Vladimir Krasnov told the court.

The defence lawyers also presented documentation about the confiscation of foreign travel passports. “The investigators suggested that if Lebedev were released on parole he might go into hiding abroad. Yet all Mr Lebedev’s foreign travel passports have been confiscated,” said his attorney Igor Sapozhkov.

Stating their position before the court, the lawyers asserted that it would be unlawful to extend Platon Lebedev’s detention in custody. “The only possible decision is to release Mr Lebedev from custody. How then to complete familiarisation with the case documentation is a practical matter that can be resolved,” added Krasnov.

Lebedev’s attorneys drew the court’s attention to the need to implement the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. “The investigators have not put forward new legal grounds for extending Platon Lebedev’s detention in the pre-trial remand centre,” Vladimir Krasnov told Tuesday’s hearing at the Chita Region Court. Such extensions had been repeatedly condemned and recognised as in contradiction of Article 5 (Right to liberty and security of person) of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights to which Russia is a signatory. “The European Court has indicated that this is inconsistent with the principles of legal certainty when an individual may be deprived of liberty for an indefinite period of time,” said Krasnov.

The term of detention under custody, the lawyer stressed, must correspond to the goal of criminal prosecution on a reasonable basis. Otherwise the measure of restraint is being used to exert additional pressure on the accused and constitutes torture. “That is the case with Lebedev’s treatment,” considers Krasnov, and he cited a case that has come before the European Court in Strasbourg when the detention in custody of the defendant was constantly extended without analysis of these actions.

“That situation corresponds one hundred per cent to our case,” said Krasnov. “In keeping Mr Lebedev in detention, the Ingodinsky district court and now the Chita Region Court have been acting not from a presumption of freedom but from their own distorted understanding of an obligation to retain the earlier chosen measure of restraint at all costs, regarding preliminary detention as a distinctive prelude to criminal punishment.”

The Constitution of the Russian Federation justifies limiting rights and liberties when the case concerns: the defence of the constitutionally established system; the defence of the morals, health, rights and lawful interests of other persons; and also to ensure the defence and security of the State.

“If the team of investigators asserts that the case of Lebedev and Khodorkovsky is political in character, then the first and third circumstances are excluded,” commented Krasnov. “The latest preliminary investigation has been completed and if Lebedev were released the interests of other people could not be affected.”

The spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, meanwhile, does not believe Lebedev’s constitutional rights have been infringed and says that the investigators have the right to extend the term of detention beyond 18 months. “On this matter the investigator is not under an obligation to present the court with evidence,” the prosecution representative told the court.

The hearing resumes on Wednesday. The previous hearing into this issue took place last Monday.

(Interfax, 15.07.2008)