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issued by the Registrar of the CourtECHR 023 (2011)31.05.2011
Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovskiy’s detention inbreach of the Convention
In today’s Chamber judgment in the caseKhodorkovskiy v. Russia(application
 
no. 5829/04), which is not final
1
, the European Court of Human Rights held,unanimously, that there had been:
No violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) of theEuropean Convention on Human Rights
as regards the conditions of MikhailKhodorkovskiy’s detention in the remand prison between 25 October 2003 and 8 August2005;
 Two violations of Article 3
as regards the conditions in which he was kept in court andin the remand prison after 8 August 2005;
 One violation of Article 5 § 1 (b) (lawfulness of detention for non-compliancewith a lawful order)
as regards his apprehension on 25 October 2003;
No violation of Article 5 § 1 (c) (lawfulness of detention of a criminal suspect)
as regards the lawfulness of his detention pending investigation;
One violation of Article 5 § 3 (length of detention)
as regards the length of hiscontinuous detention pending investigation and trial;
 Four violations of Article 5 § 4 (judicial review of the lawfulness of pre-conviction detention)
as regards procedural flaws related to his detention; and
 No violation of Article 18 (limitation of rights for improper purposes)
as regardsthe claim that his prosecution was politically motivated. The case concerned the arrest and detention for several years of one of the then richestpeople in Russia on charges of economic crimes.
Principal facts
The applicant, Mikhail Khodorkovskiy, is a Russian national who was born in 1963. He iscurrently serving a sentence of imprisonment and in parallel he is detained in connectionwith a second criminal case against him.Before his arrest in October 2003, Mr Khodorkovskiy was one of the richest people inRussia. A businessman, he was the major shareholder in
Yukos
, a large oil companyliquidated in 2007. He also controlled several other mining, industrial and financialcompanies. Around 2002, Mr Khodorkovskiy became involved in politics. In addition tofinancing opposition political parties, he openly criticised Russian internal policy at thetime calling it anti-democratic.Summoned on 23 October 2003 to appear the next day as a witness in a criminal case inMoscow, Mr Khodorkovskiy was unable to attend due to a business trip in Eastern
1 Under Articles 43 and 44 of the Convention, this Chamber judgment is not final. During the three-monthperiod following its delivery, any party may request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber of theCourt. If such a request is made, a panel of five judges considers whether the case deserves furtherexamination. In that event, the Grand Chamber will hear the case and deliver a final judgment. If the referralrequest is refused, the Chamber judgment will become final on that day.Once a judgment becomes final, it is transmitted to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe forsupervision of its execution. Further information about the execution process can be found here:www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/execution
 
 
Russia, of which he informed the investigating authorities. In the early morning of 25October 2003, a group of armed law-enforcement officers approached his plane at aNovosibirsk airport, apprehended him and flew him to Moscow.Mr Khodorkovskiy was interviewed at 11 a.m. on 25 October, initially as a witness. Hewas then charged in connection with a number of economic crimes. The charges werepresented in a 35-page document and read out to him at 2.20 p.m. the same day. Aboutseven hours later, he was detained by the court which referred in the detention order tothe seriousness of the crimes of which he was accused, and the possibility that heinfluence witnesses, destroy evidence or commit further crimes if released. The court didnot specify the period for which Mr Khodorkovskiy was detained.On 17 December 2003, the prosecution asked the court – in an over 300-page-longdocument – to extend Mr Khodorkovskiy’s detention. His lawyers did not receive a copyof that request before the hearing.Between 23 December 2003 and 24 March 2005, the Russian courts extendedMr Khodorkovskiy’s detention seven times. To justify his continuous detention, they usedmostly the same reasons as those mentioned in the initial detention order, and on twooccasions, gave no reasons at all. It did not appear that the judges consideredalternatives to keeping him in detention.In addition, the first two detention orders were handed down in hearings held in privateduring which the courts failed to indicate for how long his detention was being extended.Also, during those hearings, Mr Khodorkovskiy could only communicate with his lawyersin the presence of a convoy officer and through the bars of a cage in which he wasplaced in court. Further, one of the hearings was held without him or his lawyers, and hisapplication for release of 16 June 2004 was not considered. Mr Khodorkovskiy appealedagainst the court orders extending his detention, unsuccessfully; the courts heard thoseappeals at various intervals ranging between five days and a month and nine days.On 11 November 2003, one of Mr Khodorkovskiy’s lawyers visited him in prison. As shewas leaving, prison guards searched her. They seized a written note with ideas about thecase and a draft of the legal position in the case of Platon Lebedev, who was a co-accused ex-top manager in the
Yukos
group. The Russian Government considered thatthe note had been transmitted by Mr Khodorkovskiy to his lawyer illegally and had thusnot been covered by lawyer-client privilege; the courts accepted the note into the casefile as proof of Mr Khodorkovskiy’s intention to exert pressure on witnesses.Mr Khodorkovskiy, on the other hand, insisted that his lawyer had been searchedunlawfully and in blatant violation of lawyer-client privilege.Pending his trial, Mr Khodorkovskiy was detained in two different remand prisons inMoscow, and he complained about the conditions there. In particular, he claimed thatthe cells were overcrowded, at times too cold or too hot, that he never had access tofresh air, that the toilet facilities in his cell were humiliating, that he could only washonce a week and could not be visited by independent observers nor be examined by hisdoctors. During the trial, he was placed in a cage and was always handcuffed to aconvoy officer when leaving it.On 31 May 2005, Mr Khodorkovskiy was found guilty as charged. He was sentenced tospend eight years in prison and was sent to serve his sentence in the Chita Region.
2
 
 
Complaints, procedure and composition of the Court
Relying on Articles 3, 5, and 18, Mr Khodorkovskiy complained that he was detainedunlawfully and for too long in appalling conditions and that the charges against him hadbeen politically motivated.The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 9 February2004.Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven, composed as follows:Christos
Rozakis
(Greece),
President 
,Nina
Vaji
(Croatia),Anatoly
Kovler
(Russia),Khanlar
Hajiyev
(Azerbaijan),Dean
Spielmann
(Luxembourg),Giorgio
Malinverni
(Switzerland),George
Nicolaou
(Cyprus)
 , Judges
,and also Søren
Nielsen
,
Section Registrar.
Decision of the Court
Article 3 (conditions of detention and in court)
The Court found that the conditions in which Mr Khodorkovskiy had been detainedbetween the day of his apprehension and 8 August 2005 had not breached theConvention. While the ventilation had been poor and he had had no privacy when usingthe toilet, in exchange for a fee he had paid he had exercised in the prison fitness room,had taken additional showers and had received food and medicine from his relativesduring that period.However, Mr Khodorkovskiy had been kept in inhuman and degrading condititionsbetween 8 August and 9 October 2005. In particular, he had had less than 4 squaremetres of personal space in his cell, and the sanitary conditions had been appalling.There had therefore been a violation of Article 3.The Court found a further violation of Article 3 as Mr Khodorkovskiy had been humiliatedby the security arrangements in the court room during the hearings. He had beenaccused of non-violent crimes, had no criminal record, and there had been no evidencethat he was predisposed to violence. Despite that, he had been kept in the cagethroughout the trial, exposed to the public at large, which had humiliated him, at least inhis own eyes, and aroused in him feelings of inferiority.
Article 5 § 1 (b) (apprehension)
Mr Khodorkovskiy had missed the questioning as a witness to which he had beensummoned on 23 October 2003. That, however, could not justify taking him forcefully toMoscow in a manner more appropriate for dealing with dangerous criminals thanwitnesses. Further, only hours after the start of his questioning as a witness on 25October 2005, Mr Khodorkovskiy had become an accused when 35-page-long charges of criminal offences had been brought against him and a 9-page-long request for hisdetention had been filed with the court.The speed with which the investigating authorities had acted suggested that they hadbeen prepared for such a development and had wanted Mr Khodorkovskiy as a defendant
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