RUSSIA: Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was jailed for nine years by a Moscow court yesterday for fraud in a sentence that provoked a storm of international criticism.
Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, was told his sentence at the end of a marathon 12-day reading of a guilty verdict on six charges of fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion.
President George Bush said soon afterwards: "It looked like he had been judged guilty prior to having a fair trial.
"Here, you're innocent until proven guilty, and it appeared to us, at least people in my administration, that it looked like he had been judged guilty prior to having a fair trial," he said in a press conference in Washington. "We're watching the ongoing case."
Supporters of the oil tycoon insist he is innocent, and that the charges and verdict were ordered by the Kremlin as punishment after Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, began backing opposition parties.
Khodorkovsky, sitting in a steel cage flanked by armed policemen, sat looking straight ahead as the verdict was announced.
Asked by one of the three-strong panel of judges if he understood, he said "no sane person" could understand the verdict.
His Canadian lawyer, Robert Amsterdam, called the verdict "cruel and unusual punishment". He told The Irish Times: "It is horrible to witness that kind of travesty."
Mr Amsterdam said he would take the case to the European Court of Human Rights should an appeal not be upheld in Russia's supreme court.
US senator Tom Lantos said he would table a motion to Congress calling for Russia to be ejected from the G8 group of industrialised countries because the case had raised concerns about Moscow's commitment to the rule of law.
"It seems that this political trial before a kangaroo court has come to a shameful conclusion," said Senator Lantos outside the court.
"It is obvious that the conclusion of the trial was predetermined politically and Mr Khodorkovsky could have been left at home."
The Russian prosecutor general's office said it was satisfied with the court's ruling. "We find the verdict fair and objective," spokeswoman Ms Natalia Vishnyakova said.
"It matches the actual circumstances of the case and the gravity of the crimes committed by the defendants."
And President Putin's chief-of-staff Mr Dmitry Medvedev has described the trial as "showcase" for other business leaders.
Khodorkovsky (41) has been in jail since October 2003 when he was arrested by armed police in Siberia. He was also fined €590 million and was jailed along with business partner Platon Lebedev, both found guilty on six of the seven charges.
A seventh was dismissed because it was outside a 10-year statue of limitations.
What made the case so controversial was its timing. In 2003 Khodorkovsky had begun diverting some of his fortune into the coffers of parties opposed to President Vladimir Putin.
He had also begun talks to buy other Russian oil companies and enter joint ventures with US firms that would have increased his political power.
Since then, his company Yukos has been charged more than €29.5 million in back taxes, and the government sold its main oil production facility back to a state-controlled oil firm, provoking criticism of a "back-door renationalisation".
Yukos called the verdict "a gross travesty of justice".
A statement on the company website declared: "This verdict is a tragic example of the authorities turning a law-enforcement and judicial system against an individual for political ends".
A final judgment by the outside world will depend on a detailed analysis of this marathon case.
As with many fraud trials, guilt depends on an often complex judgment about on which side of the law sit complicated financial actions. But the political storm seems likely to grow.