The Legal Team
The career of defense attorney is not an easy one in Russia, where even President Dmitry Medvedev speaks openly about the "legal nihilism" which plagues the judiciary. Defending Russia's most famous political prisoner has not only been a tall order for the Khodorkovsky and Lebedev legal team but has also been fraught with professional and personal risks.
A respected line-up of Russian and international lawyers with extensive experience in human rights and other areas of law has been assembled to defend Khodorkovsky and Lebedev.
See a full list of the legal team with selected biographies »
Campaign Against the Lawyers
On October 9, 2003, several months after Platon Lebedev's arrest, the Prosecutor General's office carried out raids on the offices of Lebedev's lawyer Anton Drel. Drel called the raids "a precedent-setting event, because nobody in the history of Russia or the Soviet Union had ever searched the office of a lawyer working on a criminal case."
Throughout the trial, defense attorneys believed they were under close surveillance, as demonstrated by Prosecutor Shokhin's prior knowledge of hospital visits and unanticipated absences among the legal team. Lawyers had inconsistent and limited access to their clients and often worked under unreasonable deadlines to present their defense. Valuable time was wasted when witnesses scheduled to testify for the defense pulled out due to intimidation. Important and carefully-prepared documents, crucial to the defense, were deemed inadmissible and irrelevant by the judges.
Read European Parliament Resolution Russia: attacks on human rights defenders, and the Anna Politkovskaya murder trial
Lawyers Face Threats and Intimidation
After Khodorkovsky's cassation appeal was dismissed, the Prosecutor General's Office began a campaign against the lawyers to punish them for their involvement in the case.
- International lawyer Bob Amsterdam was roused from his hotel room the night after the failed appeal, told that his visa was cancelled and ordered to leave Russia within 24 hours or face arrest.
- Karinna Moskalenko, Yuri Schmidt and Albert Mkrtychev and other lawyers from the Khodorkovsky and Lebedev defense team faced various disciplinary proceedings brought by the prosecution, including efforts to disbar them from practicing law, a request later rejected by the Board of the Chamber of Lawyers of the City of Moscow.
- Female lawyers visiting Khodorkovsky's prison in Siberia are sometimes required to remove all their clothes, even undergarments, during searches at prison entrances.
Still, the lawyers remain determined. Yuri Schmidt, whose human rights work has received recognition from Human Rights Watch, Helsinki Watch, and the International League of Human Rights, believes the YUKOS Affair and Khodorkovsky trial "revive the worst moments of Soviet history."
Schmidt said: "I shall know no peace" until Khodorkovsky's release. "I'll move heaven and earth to bring the day of his release closer."