RUSSIA: Jailed Russian oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky has joined a long list of Russian writers and dissidents in being singled out as a prisoner of conscience.
An open letter to European leaders, signed by key luminaries in the country's human rights movement, urges the international community to declare the tycoon a political prisoner.
Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, was jailed this summer on charges of fraud and embezzlement in a highly controversial trial. His lawyers accused prosecutors and judges of colluding and insist the charges are baseless.
Khodorkovsky was last month sent to serve his eight-year sentence in a labour camp in Siberia, close to a disused uranium mine. His co-defendant, Platon Lebedev, is serving his sentence in another labour camp, inside the Arctic Circle.
The letter is signed by 23 prominent rights activists, among them Moscow Helsinki Group head Lyudmila Alexeyeva and chess champion-turned-opposition politician Garry Kasparov.
Its authors say the motivation for jailing the two men "was their vigorous public support for opposition political forces and institutions of civil society". The letter casts Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, as a modern despot, saying he is returning the country to a "totalitarian past".
The appeal calls the jailing of Khodorkovsky an "act of intimidation against society in general".