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Sick executive 'blackmail claim'



By Upstream staff 

Gravely ill and imprisoned Russian oil executive Vasily Alexanian has accused his jailers of trying to blackmail him into testifying against old associates by denying him the medical treatment he needs to stay alive, reports said today.

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg made the highly unusual step of issuing three requests for 36-year-old Vasily Alexanian to be transferred to a specialist hospital but Russian authorities have not complied, Reuters reported.

Alexanian's case is politically charged because he is the former vice president of the now-defunct Yukos oil compnay, whose main shareholder Mikhail Khodorkovsky is in a Siberian prison after falling foul of the Kremlin.

Investigators deny any unlawful treatment of Alexanian, who is awaiting trial on charges of fraud and tax evasion. They say he has made his own health worse by rejecting the treatment on offer in the prison sanatorium.

At a Supreme Court hearing on Wednesday where his lawyers challenged his detention, prosecutor Vladimir Khomutovsky said Alexanian had HIV/AIDS. His lawyers said they did not have their client's consent to disclose his illness.

In an open letter he passed out of the Sailors' Rest prison in Moscow, Alexanian said he was now nearly blind, had a constant fever and was in urgent need of a course of drug treatment that was only available outside prison.

"The prognosis is death," said his lawyer Yelena Lvova when asked what would happen if Alexanian, in detention since April 2006, was not transferred to a civilian hospital soon.

Kremlin critics say Yukos and its executives became the targets of an official vendetta because they challenged President Vladimir Putin's power. The company's chief Khodorkovsky is expected to stand trial soon on a set of new charges.


Wednesday, 16 January, 2008, 16:54 GMT  | last updated: Wednesday, 16 January, 2008, 17:08 GMT

Moscow claims: the case is politically charged
 

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