Svetlana Dobronravova, a reader of the Metro newspaper, told the publication she overheard lawyers discussing the verdict. “I was attending to my own matters in the Khamovnichesky Court,” said Dobronravova. “It was the last day of arguments in the Yukos case. I accidentally heard a female prosecutor’s telephone conversation. She said: ‘Now the lawyers are rattling off fees, Khodorkovsky is avoiding answering. But the sentence isn’t ready, they haven’t brought it from the Moscow City Court yet.'”

“I’m prepared to testify in court!” she added.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev were sentenced to 14 years in prison late last December in the second court case filed against them by the government. They were accused of stealing oil from their own company, Yukos. The case is widely believed to have been politically motivated and analysts and oppositionists alike routinely point to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the driving force behind the guilty verdict.

On Monday, Khamovnichesky Court spokesperson and aide Natalya Vasilyeva said the verdict was not written by presiding Judge Viktor Danilkin, but by judges in the Moscow City Court.

According to Metro, Vasilyeva said her family is now experiencing pressure from Russian law enforcement – internal ministry officials have inquired about her spouse’s documents. The police denied any involvement.

Dobronravova is not the first person to come forward with evidence backing up Vasilyeva’s accusations. On Monday evening, Novaya Gazeta columnist Vera Chelishcheva wrote on the newspaper’s blog: “I agree with what Natasha is saying. We all heard how Danilkin screamed in his chamber during breaks in the hearings. He screamed at prosecutors, so it was occasionally heard in the courtroom.”

Danilkin himself has maintained that the accusations are slander, but, as Kasparov.ru put it, “is not rushing to bring her to court.”

In an interview published Monday by Gazeta.ru, Khamovnichesky Court aide and press secretary Natalya Vasilyeva said the pressure Danilkin was subjected to was “constant” throughout the entire trial and up through when the verdict was read. “I can say that the whole judicial community understands very well that this is a made-to-order case and a made-to-order trial,” she said.

As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports:

Vasilyeva said Danilkin was summoned to the Moscow City Court on December 25, two days before he began reading the verdict, where he was to meet an “important person who had to give him clear instructions about the verdict.”

On December 30, Danilkin sentenced Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev to 14 years in prison. The first eight years were to run concurrently with the eight-year sentences for tax evasion and fraud that the two had been serving since 2003 and which were set to finish this year.

According to Vasilyeva, unspecified top Russian officials were concerned that Danilkin’s verdict would not be sufficiently harsh, “My suspicions are based on what I heard in the court corridors,” she said. “I heard people who were close to the judge say that [Khodorkovsky’s] verdict was written in the Moscow City Court, that it was all done in a hurry, very quickly, and that Danilkin had nothing to do with this verdict.”

At another point in the interview, Vasilyeva said she knew “with absolute certainty that the verdict was brought [to the Khamovnichesky District Court] from the Moscow City Court.”

In remarks reported by Russian news agencies, Danilkin denounced Vasilyeva’s allegations as “slander.”

Likewise, Anna Usacheva, a spokeswoman for the Moscow City Court, called the interview a “provocation” and a “well-planned PR act,” in remarks reported by ITAR-TASS. “I’m certain that Natalya Vasilyeva will … renounce her comments,” she said.

Speaking to Kasparov.ru, political analysts and opposition figures had mixed reactions to the interview:

Stanislav Belkovsky, political analyst:

– Now society will have no doubt that the verdict was unjust. I wouldn’t rule out that Judge Viktor Danilkin himself, who wants to save his own reputation, had something to do with the interview. It’s well known that Danilkin was already acutely distressed back in August 2010, because he knew then that he would have to hand down a conviction without sufficient basis for it. It seems to me that he expected decisions by the Supreme Court and the Kremlin that could have lightened pressure on him from the Moscow City Court and Olga Yegorova, but these decisions never came to be.

It’s unlikely that this interview would have happened without Danilkin’s sanction; I have reason to believe that he knew about it. And the fact that he’s denying this now is entirely normal. Otherwise he would have had the courage to say that he was pressured himself.

Ilya Yashin, co-leader of the Solidarity opposition movement

– This is not, alas, going to have any effect on Khodorkovsky’s fate. Not Danilkin, nor Olga Yegorova, nor the fact that Khodorkovsky was the head of Yukos will have any effect on his fate. The course of events can be affected only one person, and his name is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

Since Khodorkovsky is Putin’s personal enemy, he’s going to sit in prison for as long as Putin stays in power, because there are going to be illegal reprisals against him.

Aleksei Mukhin, political analyst:

– There are two versions of what happened. Either the girl has a sense of conscience or, more likely, she wants to become famous – to become a witness of the opposition, a ‘devil’s advocate.’ But this is a dead end. The entire state machine is going to work to make sure that this story doesn’t develop. Here we’re talking about chief government executives, and there could be any possible consequences.

Lev Ponomarev, leader of the movement For Human Rights:

– I see this as an extraordinary event that is going to influence the entire situation surrounding Khodorkovsky and Lebedev’s conviction. Criminal charges should be filed for impeding due process. I (and possibly other human rights advocates) are going to appeal to the prosecutor’s office in regards to the publication of this interview. We also need to appeal for Medvedev to take Khodorkovsky’s case under his own control. Vasilyeva needs to be taken into protection. Indeed, criminal charges are going to be filed against her. Even Danilkin has promised to file charges.

A video and the full text of the interview can be found here.

From the Moscow Times:

Kasyanov told the Khamovnichesky District Court that the changes were politically motivated and contradicted the everyday practices of oil companies.

“By the end of 2003, I had a clear understanding that both were arrested under political motives,” he said.

Kasyanov said he tried to talk with Putin after Lebedev was arrested in July 2003 and Khodorkovsky was arrested in October that year, but Putin refused to discuss the issue with him. Only on the third try did Putin reply, he said.

“I asked Putin to clarify what he knew about the situation, but he refused twice, and then he gave me an answer,” Kasyanov said.

“He said Yukos financed Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, political parties that it was allowed to finance, but also the Communist Party, which it wasn’t allowed to.”

Khodorkovsky and his lawyers have been trying for months to convince the court to call the prime minister as a witness. Until Monday, it had dismissed this possibility as “premature,” despite a series of questions penned by Khodorkovsky that only Vladimir Putin would be able to properly address.

After Kasyanov’s testimony, the idea that such a subpoena would be premature made even less sense than before. Therefore, lawyers for the defense requested once again that the court call in Prime Minister Putin, as well as Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, arguing that new circumstances had come to light that made their interrogations necessary for the case.

On Thursday, however, the court turned down the lawyers’ request. Judge Viktor Danilkin had said previously that he “did not find any legal basis” for the subpoenas, and now said that the new arguments by the defense left no different impression. The prime minister and finance minister would be interrogated only if they personally appeared in court, he said.

Prosecutor Vyacheslav Smirnov, meanwhile, made it clear that there would be no interrogation of the prime minister in the Khamovnichesky Court, period. When journalists asked him why, Smirnov responded: “Because we live on the ground.”

The ex-CEO of former oil giant Yukos announced his hunger strike in a letter to Russian Supreme Court Chairman Vyacheslav Lebedev; his lawyers published its content on their website Tuesday morning. The letter outlines how a Moscow court ruling to detain Khodorkovsky and his co-defendant, Platon Lebedev, for another three months violates a procedural amendment introduced last month by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. The two are currently on trial facing charges from the Russian government of embezzlement that they dismiss as obviously untrue and politically motivated.

“The Khamovnichesky Court, by ruling on May 14, 2010, to extend my arrest, blatantly disregarded the changes recently incorporated into article 108 of the Criminal Procedure Code [UPK] of the Russian Federation,” says the letter. The changes referred to allow those charged with economic crimes to be released on bail except for under a limited number of circumstances: if their identity cannot be established, if they lack a place of residence in Russia, or if they have attempted to flee the country or hide from investigators. None of these circumstances apply to Khodorkovsky or Lebedev, who have been sitting out their 8-year prison terms in Siberia since 2005 as the result of a fraud case that was also widely viewed as politically motivated. Their lawyers had reminded the court of these amendments, which were introduced in response to the scandalous death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in pretrial detention last November, before the verdict was reached on Friday.

Nevertheless, Khodorkovsky goes on, “the court did not even consider it necessary to explain the reason for not adhering to the law.” Moreover, he said that he knew of other cases where the new amendments had been similarly disregarded. He stressed that while he the ruling had little effect on his own situation, his hunger strike was geared towards protesting the precedent that it would set.

“I can’t agree to something where the creation of a precedent in such a high-profile case would go unnoticed by the country’s administration, since it will immediately be replicated by corrupt bureaucrats in hundreds of other, less high-profile cases,” explained the former Yukos CEO.

Khodorkovsky said he wants “President Medvedev to know exactly how the law that was adopted altogether a month ago by his initiative… is being put to use, or, more accurately, is being sabotaged.” Therefore, he intends to strike until he gets confirmation that the president has received “exhaustive information” on the precedent being set by the Khamovnichesky Court in failing to adhere to existing law.

Supreme Court Chairman Vyacheslav Lebedev said that he has received Khodorkovsky’s letter and promised to look into the allegations and provide a response. Sources in Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service told RIA Novosti that they would be keeping track of Khodorkovsky’s health, but issued no official comment. President Medvedev has so far given no response.

Vadim Klyuvgant, a lawyer for Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, reiterated his client’s sentiment that the Khamovnichesky Court ruling is a “sign of catastrophe” that “is not so bad for our clients as it is for the entire country and for its president.”

“Because if such sabotage is possible in a situation when the people wouldn’t be released anyway, then what can we expect or say in regards to any other person who could and should have been released as a result of this law?” said Klyuvgant.

In comments obtained by the Christian Science Monitor, political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky explained how Khodorkovsky’s decision “is a direct challenge to Medvedev to separate himself from the Putin era and enforce the laws that he himself has sponsored.” As Piontkovsky elaborated:

“Khodorkovsky is making it necessary for Medvedev to define his position,” says Andrei Piontkovsky, director of the independent Institute for Strategic Studies in Moscow. “His challenge is very clever, legally and politically. He isn’t demanding that he be freed, rather just for confirmation that Medvedev has been made aware of his case. . . The ball is now in Medvedev’s court. Will he choose to follow the logic of the law, and risk a damaging split with Putin? He will have to make a choice, and that could determine Medvedev’s own political future.”

Additional reading:
• Who Fears a Free Mikhail Khodorkovsky? – NY Times Magazine

The announcement from the prosecution came as a surprise since, aside from the fact that the case had become seemingly endless, Prosecutor Gyulchekhra Ibragimova had previously told presiding Judge Viktor Danilkin that “maybe, yes,” there would be more witnesses on Monday. Even after the revised announcement, however, Prosecutor Valery Lakhtin stipulated that they maintain the right to call more witnesses at a later point in time. “This is an inalienable right of both the defense and the prosecution,” he said.

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were both convicted on controversial charges of fraud in 2005, and have been sitting in prison ever since. In the current case, the two are charged with embezzling all of the oil produced by Yukos between 1998 and 2003 and profiting from its sale. Since the beginning of court hearings on March 9, 2009, prosecutors read out chosen passages at length from the hefty 188-volume case, not calling their first witness until the end of September. But neither that witness nor any of the proceeding 50 others testified to having any knowledge that any oil had been stolen at all.

The defense, meanwhile, has a list of 250 witnesses that it would like to call to court. Chiefly among them is Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is widely believed to have personally ordered the original case against Khodorkovsky. In an interview earlier this month with the British newspaper The Independent, the former Yukos CEO issued a series of questions that he wants Putin to answer under oath. Regardless of what witnesses the defense ends up successfully bringing to court, Khodorkovsky is expected to testify first. Lebedev, in his turn, has said that he will be the last.

Compiled from reports by Gazeta.ru.