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Russian court orders freeing of sick ex-Yukos chief
AFP - Tuesday, December 9
MOSCOW (AFP) - - A Moscow court on Monday ordered the release on bail of a jailed former executive of the Yukos oil group who is battling cancer and AIDS, after human rights activists waged a long battle for his freedom.
Vasily Aleksanian can be released from detention once Moscow City Court receives his bail set at around 1.8 million dollars (1.4 million euros), said Anna Usachyova, a court spokeswoman.
"We changed the terms of Aleksanian's detention and will free him on bail for 50 million rubles," Usachyova told AFP.
One of Aleksanian's lawyers, Yelena Lvova, welcomed the ruling as "progress" in comments to Echo of Moscow radio and added that it came as a surprise to the defence team.
However she expressed concern about the nearly two-million-dollar size of the bail and fear that it might be "a trap that was ordered to leave Vasily Aleksanian in detention."
Aleksanian's case has evoked sympathy around the world and prompted a human rights campaign after his lawyers said the prison service denied him proper treatment for more than a year.
He was transferred to hospital in February but kept under round-the-clock guard and an uproar was caused when one of his lawyers complained that he was being chained to his sick-bed.
Last month Aleksanian underwent an operation to remove his spleen, according to his lawyers. Supporters have said he is almost blind and near death.
The Harvard-trained lawyer was arrested in April 2006 and charged with embezzlement, money laundering and tax evasion as part of a broader legal assualt on Yukos, once Russia's biggest oil company.
Former Yukos chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky -- serving an eight-year sentence in a Siberian prison -- carried out a hunger strike in solidarity with Aleksanian.
Analysts say the campaign against Yukos was masterminded by then-president Vladimir Putin in order to rein in powerful "oligarchs" like Khodorkovsky who acquired vast wealth and influence in the 1990s.
Khodorkovsky was arrested at gunpoint in 2003 and the company was gradually dismantled after being hit with massive back-tax claims.
Aleksanian served as head of Yukos' legal department from 1996 to 2003 and then briefly returned to serve as its executive vice-president in 2006, while it was facing bankuptcy proceedings. He was arrested just weeks later.
While in pre-trial detention he was revealed to be suffering from AIDS and related illnesses, prompting a long legal battle for his release including repeated appeals to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Aleksanian and his lawyers say that Russian officials offered to release him for medical treatment in exchange for testifying against Khodorkovsky. The authorities have denied the allegation.
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Enlarge Photo
A Russian court has ruled that former Yukos executive Vasily Aleksanian, seen here during a court hearing in February 2008, should be release on bail -- which was set at $1.8 million. Aleksanian -- the former vice-president of Yukos -- is battling cancer and AIDS.
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