MOSCOW: An aide to the judge in the second trial of Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky sparked a storm Monday by alleging he was pressured into delivering a guilty verdict and jail sentence in the case.
Natalya Vasilyeva, a spokeswoman for Moscow's Khamovnichesky district court and an aide to judge Viktor Danilkin, made the explosive allegations in interviews with liberal website Gazeta.ru and television channel Dozhd (Rain).
Danilkin immediately denounced the allegations as "slander" while the Moscow city court said her comments "were nothing other than a provocation," Russian news agencies reported.
"Danilkin started to write the verdict. I suspect that what was in that verdict did not please the higher instance. And so he received a different verdict which he had to read out," Vasilyeva said.
She said that "when something was happening not the way it was supposed to" Danilkin "had to give information to the Moscow City court and received certain instructions from there about how to behave."
"What judge Danilkin was doing was more of a forced action. By law a judge is not required to seek advice or listen to anyone's opinion," she said, adding that interfering in the legal process is not allowed for anyone.
Khodorkovsky's defence has previously said that Danilkin's verdict was a near copy of the prosecution's charges, and that he was acting on higher orders in delivering it.
"I hope that this is not a provocation," defence lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant told RIA-Novosti, adding that for him the interview was "no sensation".
The reading of the verdict to Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev started on December 27 and dragged into several days as Danilkin speed-read hundreds of pages in a barely audible monologue in a small stuffy courtroom packed with reporters.
On December 25, a Saturday, Danilkin was summoned to the Moscow city court where he spent all day apparently waiting for an "important person who had to give him clear instructions about the verdict," Vasilyeva said.
She said she often saw Danilkin in a highly-strung mood during the process and that he appeared unlike his usual "cheerful, stable, and sociable" self.
Vasilyeva said she believed she will most likely be fired after the whistle-blowing interview.
"I wanted to be a judge. When I saw... how it works, the fairy tale that judges are subordinate only to law and nobody else disappeared," she said. "I don't have any interest. I have disappointment."
Moscow city court spokeswoman Anna Usacheva called the interview a "provocation" and a "well-planned PR act" ahead of the court's review of an appeal of the verdict.
"I am sure that Natalya Vasilyeva will yet renounce her comments," she told ITAR-TASS news agency.
Danilkin likewise quickly denied Vasilyeva's claims. "I am sure that the statement by Natalya Vasilyeva is nothing but slander and can be denied through a legal process," he told the agency.
Danilkin on December 30 handed a new 14-year sentence to Khodorkovsky and his co-accused Platon Lebedev after finding them guilty of money laundering and embezzlement in a trial that started in March 2009.
The sentence was angrily condemned in the West and Khodorkovsky's supporters maintained he had been punished for daring to continue to oppose Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
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