Officials deny high radiation at prison

A local government official today denied that there were high levels of radiation around the Russian Far East prison camp where oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been sent to serve an eight-year sentence.

Khodorkovsky’s lawyers had expressed concern about the proximity of the Priargunskoye uranium-mining plant to the prison in the Chita region where Khodorkovsky reportedly arrived last week.

“Claims of allegedly excessive radiation in the town and the penitentiary ... are untrue,” the Interfax agency quoted local government official Oleg Shevchenko as saying.

Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev have been sent to Russia’s far-flung corners to serve out their tax evasion and fraud sentences, provoking a furious response from their lawyers who contend that by law they should be imprisoned in or near the region where they live. Both men are from Moscow.

Their conviction and the parallel renationalization of Yukos’ most lucrative fields in December are seen as Kremlin punishment for Khodorkovsky’s growing clout.

Lebedev, whose lawyers say is seriously ill, was sent to a prison camp in the Kharp settlement in the arctic Yamalo-Nenets region.

In a letter to government ombudsman Vladimir Lukin, lawyers, human rights activists and academics slammed the “centuries-old practice of using a harsh climate and distance from home as additional punishment for convicts (and their relatives simultaneously).” The letter called for Lukin to have the pair moved.

Russian newspapers today focussed on Khodorkovsky’s new address in the town of Krasnokamensk, where the prison is located.

Noviye Izvestia, citing local officials, reported that the administration had started repairing the potholed roads, and one businessman planned a hotel to tap the anticipated flow of visitors.

The Kommersant business daily quoted a law enforcement official as saying that security services had screened inmates and prison guards alike before a decision was taken to send Khodorkovsky to Krasnokamensk.

The RIA-Novosti agency, meanwhile, cited Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Natalia Terekhova as saying her client appeared well. His only complaint, she said, was that the prison library was under-stocked.

“Of course he will order the delivery of more books,” she was quoted by Interfax as saying.

Neither Terekhova nor Shevchenko could be reached for comment.

The head of the Chita region prisons’ authority, Yuri Yakushevsky, said prison officials had yet to decide on what work Khodorkovsky would be given. Prisoners are typically given sewing and woodwork to do, but there was not enough work for all, he was quoted by RIA-Novosti as saying.