Khodorkovsky vows to fight for Russian political prisoners

GENEVA, Switzerland – Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was freed by Moscow last month after a decade in jail, vowed Sunday, January 5, to fight for Russian political prisoners from his new base in Switzerland.

“You can’t live with peace of mind when you know there are political detainees rotting in prison,” Khodorkovsky told Swiss public television SRF on the train that took him from Berlin to Basel.

A spokeswoman for the man who was Russia’s most famous prisoner until his release on December 20 said he had travelled to Switzerland with his wife to take their sons back to school.

“He is in Switzerland, where his children go to school,” she told Agence France-Presse, refusing to reveal which city Khodorkovsky would travel to next.

SRF reported that the Kremlin critic arrived at the train station in Basel at 6:54 pm (1754 GMT) accompanied by his wife Inna, his daughter Nastia and twin sons Gleb and Ilja.

Bern said last Monday, December 30, it had granted a three-month visa to the Kremlin critic, who was jailed for 10 years for financial crimes but last month pardoned by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The 50-year-old had stayed in Germany since his release.

“Both of my youngest sons go to school in Switzerland, and their lessons will soon start up again,” he told SRF on the train.

It remains unclear where exactly in Switzerland Khodorkovsky’s wife and twin sons live, with a number of possible locations floated in the media in recent days.

The latest report in Swiss outlets suggested the family was based in Chernex, in the municipality of Montreux, overlooking Lake Geneva.

In a statement Sunday, Khodorkovsky’s spokespeople said he was “delighted that Switzerland is the second country in which he can breathe the air of freedom”.

“Mr. Khodorkovsky and his family are thankful to Switzerland for providing this opportunity, and will appreciate the time and space to cherish this special time together,” it added.

It stressed though that the former oil tycoon “has not yet made any plans about permanent residency in Switzerland or anywhere else”.

Khodorkovsky’s supporters say his decade-long imprisonment was Putin’s revenge against him for financing the political opposition and openly criticizing the Russian leader.

Russia’s one-time richest man, who has said he would stay away from his home country where he still has a court order to pay $550 million in damages hanging over him, has pledged not to seek revenge against Putin.

But he argued that the struggle for the rights of political prisoners was not a political one.

“I think that working to free people unjustly imprisoned is the duty of every citizen. This has nothing to do with politics,” he told SRF.

In Sunday’s statement, he hailed Switzerland for its “principled positions taken … over the many years of his unjust imprisonment.”

“The Swiss judicial authorities were quick to recognize the politicized nature of Mr Khodorkovsky’s prosecution,” the statement added.

After Khodorkovsky was jailed in 2003 for fraud and tax evasion, Switzerland initially cooperated with Moscow by freezing assets related to his since bankrupt oil company Yukos.

But in 2004, Switzerland’s top court lifted the freeze on some $1.6 billion of those assets. Three years later, another 200 million Swiss francs were unfrozen after the court rejected Moscow’s request for help with the probe.

In their ruling, the supreme court judges said all the evidence “clearly supports suspicions that the criminal proceedings opened in Moscow are instrumentalized by the powers that be” in Russia.

Once Russia’s biggest oil group, Yukos declared bankruptcy in 2006, and all its assets auctioned off to settle multi-billion-dollar back tax claims filed by the Russian government.

It remains unclear what assets Khodorkovsky still has in Switzerland. – Rappler.com