The human rights organization Amnesty International has declared jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his former business partner Platon Lebedev to be prisoners of conscience, Kasparov.ru reports.

The announcement came the same day as a Moscow City Court ruling to uphold a December 2010 verdict that extended the pair’s current prison sentences through 2017, reducing them slightly for a 2016 release. The case is recognized internationally as politically motivated, specifically at the behest of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

“For several years now these two men have been trapped in a judicial vortex that answers to political not legal considerations,” said a press release from Amnesty International on Tuesday. “Today’s verdict makes it clear that Russia’s lower courts are unable, or unwilling, to deliver justice in their cases.”

Just last week, the organization said that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev could not be considered prisoners of conscience, telling Radio Free Liberty/Radio Europe that “a prisoner of conscience is a person who was sentenced for his or her views or beliefs,” while “anyone who might be involved in wrongdoing or even crimes, but whose case was launched only for political reasons, can be called a political prisoner but not a prisoner of conscience.”

However, Tuesday’s statement indicates that the new verdict has definitively pushed Amnesty over the fence.

“The failure of the appeal court to address the fundamental flaws in the second trial and the fact that Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev have already spent eight years in jail on barely distinguishable charges, points to the conclusion that their second convictions have been sought for political reasons relating purely to who they are,” said Nicola Duckworth, director of Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia Program.

Vadim Klyuvgant, a lawyer for the prisoners, said that “this is a somewhat belated statement of a perfectly obvious fact – about seven years so.”

Harsh criticism of the upheld ruling has resounded throughout Europe and the United States. In a statement released on Tuesday, European Union Foreign Affairs Chief Catherine Ashton said she was “troubled by allegations of numerous violations in due process which reflect systemic problems within the Russian judiciary. The Khodorkovsky and Lebedev case has become emblematic for the lack of confidence in how the law is applied in Russia today.”

European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek was also appalled at the behavior of the Russian judicial system. “This case was marred with alleged violations of due process and fair trial from the very start. It shows unfortunately that there is still a very long path for Russia to take to improve its rule of law and protection of human rights,” he said.

Russia’s Public Chamber and Ministry of International Affairs both criticized Amnesty International’s about-face as “unexpected” and “one-sided and politicized,” respectively.

On Wednesday, the European Court of Human Rights announced that their own ruling on a complaint filed by Khodorkovsky would be issued on May 31. A press release on the court’s website outlined a list of the prisoner’s complaints against the Russian government:

Relying on Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment), Mr Khodorkovskiy complains in particular about the conditions in the remand prisons where he has been detained and in the courtroom during his trial. He also complains under Article 5 (right to liberty and security) about the unlawfulness of his arrest and subsequent detention pending investigation and trial, excessive length of the detention and unfairness of the detention proceedings. Lastly, he alleges that the criminal proceedings against him are politically motivated, in breach of Article 18 (limitation on use of restrictions on rights).

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.”

Olga Egorova, a representative of the Moscow City Court, told the agency that more than a dozen city judges have requested federal protection so far in 2010 – an unprecedented number for recent decades.

“I’ve worked in the judicial system for practically 40 years,” Egorova said. “In that time, this has simply never happened: this year, 13 judges officially appealed for protection, one was murdered, and that’s in Moscow.”

Egorova added that this was the first year that she has been personally threatened, including by judges who were fired for taking bribes. “I didn’t think that the profession of a judge could be such a dangerous one,” she said.

This past April, Moscow City Court Judge Eduard Chuvashov was shot dead in his Moscow apartment building. He had presided over the cases of several ultranationalist groups and other high-profile defendants.

According to Egorova, Chuvashov’s murder investigation is currently in the hands of the federal Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General, which has not yet come out with any information about the course of the investigation.

Aleksandr Averin of the Other Russia opposition party said that the July 20 ruling gives oppositionists the opportunity to have the case reexamined by the Tverskoy Court.

The banned rally was part of the opposition’s Strategy 31 campaign, which holds demonstrations on the 31st of every month with that date in defense of the constitutional right to free assembly. Article 31 of the Russian constitution enshrines this right, hence the name and date. As holding unsanctioned rallies is punishable under Russian federal law, Strategy 31 organizers routinely file applications for official sanction with the Moscow mayor’s office. However, they are consistently refused – as was the case for the December 31 event.

However, documents obtained with the help of Russian Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin convinced the Moscow City Court that the city’s refusal to sanction the rally needs to be reconsidered.

Usually, Moscow city authorities refuse to sanction Strategy 31 events under the pretense that other events have already been planned for the same time and place. While the December 31 event was refused sanction on this basis on December 22, the newly-revealed documents show that the place in question, Moscow’s central Triumfalnaya Square, was actually free until December 29. Only then was an event planned for the very time and place where the Moscow authorities knew the oppositionists were intent on holding their rally.

Averin said that by overturning the Tverskoy Court ruling, the Moscow City Court has effectively admitted that the Moscow authorities’ refusal to sanction Strategy 31 rallies is politically motivated and has nothing to do with a conflict of events.

The decision comes just a day after Strategy 31 organizers were denied sanction for an upcoming rally on July 31.

Former Soviet Dissident and Strategy-31 co-organizer Lyudmila Alexeyeva said that an official from the mayor’s office called to inform her on July 19 that the rally could be held at several other locations, but not on Triumfalnaya Square – which has already long since become a traditional gathering place for Strategy 31 participants.

“I didn’t even ask for a reason,” said Alexeyeva. “I’m not interested. It’s the same thing over and over again.”

Judge Dmitri Fomin handed down the conviction on Friday for two counts of murder and 22 counts of attempted murder.

The former police major sparked a national media blitz last April when he walked into a Moscow supermarket around midnight and began randomly shooting people. Three people were killed and many others were injured.

CCTV footage shows the officer, clearly drunk, struggling with patrons and supermarket staff while trying to pull out his weapon. Yevsyukov admitted in court to the murder of one cashier after being shown the incident on tape, but said that he has no memory of what happened that night.

During closing arguments on Tuesday, Yevsyukov stated that “I’m not asking for a light sentence, I’m asking for fairness, if I may ask for it.”

Defense lawyer Tatyana Bushuyeva, who had argued that Yevsyukov was not in a normal state of mind and asked for the court to consider the incident “an act of hooliganism,” said that they plan to contest the ruling.

Moscow City Police Press Secretary Pyotr Biryukov admitted to RIA Novosti that they had expected a life sentence, saying it was “a deserving punishment.”

Survivors injured in the shooting, who were earlier denied compensation by the police because Yevsyukov was off-duty at the time of the incident, are already renewing their appeals.

In addition to life in punishment for the former officer, Judge Fomin issued a separate statement to Russian Internal Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev, declaring that the career politics of his agency are “unsatisfactory.”

Investigators had determined that Yevsyukov was under stress due to pressure at work prior to the incident.

Tackling Russia’s notoriously corrupt and violent police force has been a stated goal this year for Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. Yesterday, the president fired two deputy interior ministers and more than a dozen top law enforcement officers, and issued his second order in less than a month for drastic cuts in law enforcement personnel.

While violence and corruption on the part of the police is nothing new for most Russians, the media attention brought on by Yevsyukov’s killing spree has resulted in increased coverage and criticism of the disturbing number of incidents of brutal police criminality. As reports followed one after another of officers killing pedestrians while driving drunk, fatal beatings, and an increase in police suicides, top governmental officials began calling for the Internal Ministry to be dissolved altogether.

In a recent example earlier this month, an elderly composer was severely beaten and robbed in the city of Yekaterinburg by a group of police who allegedly swore at the victim, telling him “Nurgaliyev isn’t going to help you.” Local authorities only accepted the composer’s appeal about the incident after he filed it a second time, and no criminal charges were initiated until after the story broke in the Russian media last Tuesday.