Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s business partner Platon Lebedev will use a video conference from the pre-trial detention center in the city of Arkhangelsk to attend a meeting of the presidium of Moscow City Court, Lebedev and Khodorkovsky’s press service said on Thursday.
Lebedev will try to explain to the supervisory authority that Judge Viktor Danilkin illegally extended his detention between May 17 and August 17, 2010.
Lebedev was transferred to the pre-trial detention center from Penal Colony 14 in the Arkhangelsk Region’s city of Velsk in northwestern Russia.
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev filed a parole request on May 27.
Khodorkovsky, the former head of Yukos oil company convicted of embezzlement and tax fraud, appealed against his sentence and a second trial in Moscow. He was sentenced to an additional six years on top of his initial eight-year sentence by a Moscow court in December 2010, later reduced by one year. He is now due for release in 2016.
Moscow Preobrazhensky Court returned jailed tycoon Khodorkovsky’s request to be released on parole to a pre-trial detention center in Moscow, where he was moved last year to undergo a second trial and subsequent appeal hearing, Khodorkovsky’s press service said on Monday.
The two men have denied all charges against them, saying that they were revenge for Khodorkovsky’s funding of opposition parties during the presidency of Vladimir Putin, something the Russian authorities categorically deny.