NOVOSIBIRSK, April 18 (RIA Novosti) - A local court in eastern Siberia ruled Tuesday that prison officials acted illegally when they put Mikhail Khodorkovsky in an isolation cell for keeping documents not allowed to prisoners.
The court in Krasnokamensk in Chita Region, about 1,860 miles east of Moscow, where Khodorkovsky is serving an eight-year term for tax evasion and fraud, upheld an appeal lodged by defense lawyers for the former head of embattled oil company Yukos in a bid to have all prison decisions against him overturned.
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."
Tuesday's hearing was the second on an appeal lodged by Khodorkovsky's defense. Initial proceedings were conducted under the Criminal Code and were suspended after the Chita regional court overturned a ruling on another appeal to annul the prison decision to reprimand the ex-Yukos CEO for leaving his workplace in the colony before the end of his shift.
A regional court had decided that the lower court violated hearings proceedings, because the appeal should have been reviewed under the Civil Code.
Khodorkovsky's defense is preparing an appeal against prison decision to put him in an isolation cell for the second time after allegedly being caught "eating outside the designated premises."
Meanwhile, the jailed oligarch remains in the media spotlight. He had his nose slashed last week by a fellow inmate with whom he had spent several days in an isolation cell in mid-March, but lawyers said he would not press criminal charges against the attacker.
