NOVOSIBIRSK, April 17 (RIA Novosti) - Former Yukos boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky has received ambulatory treatment after having his nose slashed Friday by a fellow inmate and his condition is being monitored, his lawyer said Monday.
Natalia Terekhova said several stitches had been applied to the gash, but doctors ruled against taking him to the hospital because the injury was not serious.
She said the former Yukos CEO would not press criminal charges against his attacker, whom she said had spent several days in an isolation cell with Khodorkovsky in mid-March for drinking tea in a place that prison authorities deemed inappropriate.
Khodorkovsky is currently serving an eight-year prison term for tax evasion and fraud in a penal colony in eastern Siberia.
Deputy Chita Region prosecutor Valery Makarov said regional prosecutors would not join the investigation launched by prison officials, because Khodorkovsky's injury was not serious.
"We were told nothing serious had happened," he said.
Terekhova also said Khodorkovsky's defense team had hired Chita-based lawyer Semyon Rosenberg to represent the jailed oligarch in local courts, due to the increasing number of appeals being lodged against the prison administration.
Khodorkovsky's lawyers have lodged three appeals asking that administrative measures imposed on the ex-Yukos boss be annulled. Khodorkovsky has been reprimanded for leaving his workplace before the end of his shift, and twice put in an isolation cell for "keeping documents not allowed to prisoners" and "eating outside the designated premises."
Khodorkovsky's lawyers dismissed a report Monday on Echo Moskvy radio that the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg had made enquiries with Russian officials about the attack.
"I do not think it is possible," lawyer Genrikh Padva said. "We have just lodged a preliminary complaint [with the court]."
