Graffiti on St. Petersburg wall, "Hands Off Khodorkovsky!" Photo by Neeka, 2007.

There's a recurring meme that jailed Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky deserves to be in jail, is not a true democrat or a true dissident, and that the European Court ruled that his case was not a violation of human rights.

None of this is true, but Kremlin spin-meisters work overtime to try to get people to believe the opposite.

The reality is that in fact he is accepted as a political prisoner by the human rights community of Russia because of the gross lack of due process and heinous violations of law in his case. Amnesty International has also condemned his second trial which added to his sentence, noting that it was politically motivated.

And as one of his lawyers, Karinna Moskalenko explains, in fact the European Court ruled in his favour on his first complaint and acknowledged that his human rights were violated. But it has not yet ruled on his second complaint, which has been accepted for review, so Putin is jumping the gun.

Here's a translation of her post on Facebook today, a summary from this article:

Putin said, "As is well know, the European Court for Human Rights determined that there were no political motivations in the criminal case and in the sentence regarding Mr. Khodorkovsky."

When I hear such statements, I ask myself: how it is possible to distort things so crudely? This is  rather illiterate speculation, calculated to influence uninformed people.

First, the European Court did not evaluate either the criminal case or the sentence; the Court will not evaluate the sentence because that's outside of its mandate.

Second, the European Court does not decide political issues — that's for Amnesty International to do, or Human Rights Watch and other international and national human rights organizations that evaluate political motivation in cases.

The European Court has only reviewed one complaint in the Khodorkovsky case, and in it, acknowledged all the human rights violations stated by Khodorkovsky — from his unlawful arrest and unfounded detention to the violation of his right not to be subjected to inhuman treatment.

At the Court, in fact the issue of Art. 18 of the Convention was examined, but lackeys from the Russian judicial system trying to suck up to Putin have deliberately — or out of stupidity — interpreted this incorrectly, thereby putting their boss in a ridiculous situation.

Let me explained what Art. 18 is. Art. 18 does not contain a single word about politics; it is a specific norm of the Convention which is about the improper application of lawful restrictions. And it was established as violated only once, in Gusinsky's case, because there it was all very obvious — he was jailed, he signed something, he was released. That was really a very rare situation when the authorities acted so outrageously, yet sincerely, to the point that they could be immediately caught red-handed. In the future, they no longer acted so blatantly — that's the entire difference.

This topic is not very easy to understand even for lawyers, which enables the authorities to speculate on it. They are silent about the fact that Khodorkovsky's rights were universally violated, and the Court in fact acknowledged all the points of violations in Khodorkovsky's first complaint, but on Art. 18, refrained from political evaluations, which is totally explained, moreover for Khodorkovsky's first complaint of February 2004, which dealt with the issues of pre-trial detention.

Now the second complaint is on deck, which was submitted after the first sentence — perhaps this is the sentence Mr.Putin has in mind? But no one will be evaluating the sentence there, either; all that the European Court can do is acknowledge that the right to a fair trial has been violated — or not. If it has been, then Russia is OBLIGED to review the case — and that is in fact our actual result. So let's see…