Medvedev will be responsible for the Moscow City Court

On May 17, in the hall No. 607 of the Moscow City Court, the cassation appeal of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Plato Lebedev will be consideration, which disputed the verdict sentenced in late December 2010 by judge Viktor Danilkin. The second case of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev has 257 volumes. At the end of April, the defenders sent 530 sheets of comments to the minutes of the court hearings. The cassation collegium of three judges was supposed to study almost 70 thousand sheets of text in two weeks. The lawyers of the defendants, who participated in the first trial in the philistine court, say that at that time almost the same amount of time took the study of the cassation appeal. Then, in the fall of 2005, the Moscow City Court for a year reduced the 9-year punishment of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. What will the cassation board decide this time? The forecasts are the most pessimistic: “They will throw a year or two, or maybe they will tighten the sentence, despite all the arguments of the defense about its complete legal nullity.”

According to The New Times, the other day, the International Amnesty was going to make a decision on recognizing Khodorkovsky and Lebedev “prisoners of conscience”. But it seems that Western human rights activists did not have “gunpowder”. Despite the fact that in the annual report they stated that the charges against the defendants in the Yukos case had a political background. We have to admit: in Soviet times, the “International Amnesty” was bolder and much more actively fought for the liberation of political prisoners in our Fatherland. Are Western human rights activists really afraid to offend the founder of the All -Russian Popular Front?

Surely the next day the decision of the Moscow City Court is commented by President Dmitry Medvedev. On May 18, he holds a large-scale press conference in the building of the Moscow School of Management "Skolkovo". If the Moscow City Court leaves the harsh verdict unchanged, the presentation of the president-modernizer in the center of innovation will look at least strange.