Human Rights Advocates

“I think that any person becomes a political prisoner if the law is applied to him selectively, and this is an absolutely clear case to me. This is a glaringly lawless action.” Elena Bonner
The Andrei Sakharov Foundation

The arrest and conviction of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev, Alexei Pichugin, Svetlana Bakhmina and other YUKOS executives and employees has caused an outcry both in Russia and around the world. Many Russian human rights groups have granted Mikhail Khodorkovsky and others status as political prisoners and have urged other groups outside Russia to do the same.

In a 2007 open letter, leading Russian human rights activists called the YUKOS case "the first political show trial in the post-Stalin age, which introduced radical changes to the landscape of public politics and economics in this country." They demanded that Khodorkovsky and other political prisoners be released.

Western human rights groups have also expressed serious concern for the implications of Khodorkovsky's imprisonment on the state of democracy, human rights, and rule of law in Russia. Amnesty International has declared there to be a "clear political context" in the Khodorkovsky case.

On April 22, 2009, leaders of eight Western human rights groups released an open letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressing their concern for the deterioration of respect for rule of law and human rights in Russia in connection with Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev's second criminal trial in Moscow. Signatories of the letter include Amnesty International, Freedom House, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, the International League for Human Rights, Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, and the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice.