Efforts to bring some humanity into Russia’s treatment of former OAO Yukos officials may be bearing some fruit.
While the fate of former Yukos Chief Executive Mikhail Khordorkovsky remains ambiguous, some gains apparently have been made for former Yukos Executive Vice-Pres. Vasily Aleksanyan.
Moscow’s Simonovsky Court Feb. 6 ruled to hospitalize Aleksanyan and suspend his trial. The court handed down the ruling based on a document provided Feb. 5 by the Matrosskaya Tishina detention facility’s administration, which said that Aleksanyan had cancer and needed treatment.
The decision came quickly after Nikolai Vlasov, the counsel for the prosecution in Aleksanyan’s trial, told journalists Feb. 6 that he could be transferred to a special clinic if doctors at the Matrosskaya Tishina detention facility decided he needs to be hospitalized. “This issue is to be decided by the chief doctor at the detention facility’s infectious ward. If the medical workers decide that [Aleksanyan] needs to be transferred to another medical institution, then this will be done,” said Vlasov.
Enter the inquirer
Don’t imagine for an instant that this decision came from the goodness of the prosecutor’s heart. The prosecutor is just following orders, and the orders are coming from high up in the Kremlin due to pressures being brought to bear on the government there. Consider an editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Feb. 6, which begins: “Another presidential campaign is under way this week—this one in Russia.”
The editorial notes that on Mar. 2 Russians will vote in a “proforma election” for a successor to KGB man Vladimir V. Putin. It says that the Kremlin has handpicked a former law professor, Dmitry Medvedev, although Putin may try to remain the power behind the scenes.
It says Medvedev, however, is trying to present a softer face than his mentor; he pledged in his first campaign speech last week to make everyone accountable before the law.
Putin’s ‘club’
The editorial notes that Putin, by contrast, has used the law as “a club” to bludgeon opponents. “If Medvedev means what he says, he ought to condemn a travesty of justice going on now in Moscow that makes Russia look as if it has reverted to the Stalin era.” The editorial continues, “Moscow courts are refusing medical treatment to a former Russian oil executive, Vasily Aleksanian, who is on trial for money laundering, and has late-stage AIDS.”
It shrewdly notes that the Russian aim is to force Aleksanian “to testify against imprisoned oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.” Not least, the paper noted the especially cruel point that “without the treatment, Aleksanian will die.”
The Inquirer said, “It is almost impossible to believe this case is going on in the 21st century, in a country whose president hobnobs with European leaders and President Bush.”
We applaud the example of the Inquirer. An oilman in far-off Russia may have benefitted.
