The court March 2 upheld a complaint lodged by Mikhail Khodorkovsky against the administration of a penal colony where he is currently jailed. Khodorkovsky had said that regulations regarding prisoners' rights to meeting with lawyers were illegal and invalid.
Under the regulations, prisoners could meet with lawyers for no more than four hours and only if they were free from work. The administration of the penal colony in the Siberian Region of Chita where Khodorkovsky is serving his eight-year term four times denied him a meeting with lawyers before 6.00 p.m.
Khodorkovsky and his lawyers said such restrictions could be imposed only at the federal level.
The jailed oligarch said the regulations violated his rights to qualified legal assistance, and contradicted Russian and international legislation.
The Prosecutor General's office has lodged an appeal against the Supreme Court's decision and demanded that it be annulled.
In May 2005, a Moscow court found Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev guilty of tax evasion and large-scale fraud, and sentenced them to nine years in a low-security penal colony. On September 22, the Moscow City Court reduced their terms to eight years.
