Yesterday, Mikhail Khodorkovsky – the oil tycoon who has found his empire stripped bare and himself in Siberia after developing a hint of a political ambition in 2003 – returned to Moscow for the first time in years. The occasion was not joyous: there are new charges in the case. Khodorkovsky is now more than halfway into his ludicrous nine-year sentence; are the authorities planning a display of magnanimity or a show trial to keep him locked up into the 2020s? For once, we actually picked up the phone and asked someone: Robert Amsterdam, the world-renowned lawyer who represented Khodorkovsky in the original trial. Here's his take.
Russia!: What's behind the new charges?
Robert Amsterdam: The charges are not new, they’ve been around for over a year. So what you’re actually asking me is what I think of the timing.
R!: That's true.
RA: There are individuals inside the Kremlin who fear even the prospect of Khodorkovsky's release. And now, in connection with the economic crisis, they don't anticipate that the new trial will get a lot of attention. At the same time, it's an opportunity to present this sorry escapade in front of the Russian court, and this intrigues them as a way to test the loyalty of the courts. I don't think it's geared toward anything else.
R!: So we shouldn't hope that they’re interested in scoring a human-rights point with Obama? It's all the rage these days – Ayman Nour just got out.
RA: No. The goal is to keep Khodorkovsky jailed indefinitely. Recall how they had President Medvedev going out and talking about legal nihilism; the Khodorkovsky case is legal nihilism. It has to be understood in that context.
R!: But I feel like his very presence in Moscow, for the new trial, should stir things up somewhat. And taken together with the sudden anger at Putin for the people's economic woes, which we've been seeing in the last few months, I don't see how a new jail term for Khodorkovsky will make him any less of a martyr, or Putin any more popular.
RA: You can't think of the people on the streets, you have to think of the interested parties in the Kremlin. The situation within Russia can't be properly gauged, and it would be presumptious of me to opine on it right now – we'll have to wait and see where the economy is going and what the impact is going to be on the society as a whole. But yes, from the process standpoint, bringing him to Moscow is a positive. Because he's been illegally held in Siberia. Because he gets to be back in Moscow and directly confront those who have put him in this position. Whatever one thinks of the bona fides of the trial, the fact that he is going to be there is powerful.
Amsterdam's blog: RobertAmsterdam.com
