MOSCOW — Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed former head of Russia’s Yukos oil company, was allowed to see his mother for the first time since December, RFE/RL’s Russian Service reports.
Marina Khodorkovskaya told RFE/RL that she visited her son in the Segezha labor camp in Russia’s northwestern republic of Karelia. Khodorkovsky was transferred there from a detention center in Moscow on June 10.
Khodorkovskaya told RFE/RL she talked to her son for four hours by phone and was able to see him through a glass partition. She said Khodorkovsky looked well and was sun-tanned, but had lost weight.
“It was the first time in several years that I was able to see him more or less thoroughly in the light as the room was very light,” she said.
Khodorkovskaya added that her son shared a room with about 15 other prisoners. He works in a larger group of 180 people in a workshop producing plastic materials.
Khodorkovsky was found guilty in December 2010 of stealing billions of dollars in oil from his own company, Yukos, and of laundering the profits. That second conviction — following an earlier one for tax evasion — means he is due to remain in jail until 2017.
Khodorkovsky had the legal right to see his relatives and talk to them by phone through the glass wall for four hours after being transferred to the labor camp from the detention center.
He will be allowed a three-day visit with relatives in August.