MOSCOW, Dec 30 (Reuters) - A jailed former oil executive gravely ill with HIV/AIDS was freed on bail on Tuesday, his father said, ending an almost three-year detention that the European Court of Human Rights called inhuman.
Vasily Alexanian’s case is politically charged because he is the former vice-president of the now-defunct oil firm Yukos, whose founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky was jailed in what some observers saw as a Kremlin drive to quash dissent.
Speaking from the hospital where Alexanian had been held under armed guard, his father said he was no longer in custody.
“We were able to collect and lodge a sum sufficient to cover the bail,” Giorgy Alexanian told Reuters by telephone. “At the moment the guards have been removed. He remains in hospital having treatment.”
Supporters of Alexanian, awaiting trial on charges of fraud and tax evasion, allege his prosecution is politically motivated and that the authorities have been deliberately denying him adequate medical treatment.
A Russian court earlier this month ruled Alexanian, who also has cancer and problems with his sight and has suffered from tuberculosis, could go free pending his trial if he lodged a bail of 50 million roubles ($1.71 million).
After his arrest in April 2006 he was initially held in a Moscow jail. Earlier this year he was transferred to a civilian hospital, though still in detention, after rights campaigners said his life was in danger.
The Kremlin denies there is any political motive behind the legal onslaught on Yukos and its top executives. It says they are criminals who defrauded the state of millions of dollars and should be punished.
Prosecutors have dismissed allegations they mistreated Alexanian, accusing him instead of refusing to accept medical treatment in a ploy to delay his trial.
Rights groups including Amnesty International have criticised Alexanian’s detention, and earlier this month the Strasbourg-based European court accused Russian authorities of violating his rights with “inhuman and degrading treatment.”
One of Alexanian’s brothers works at the Reuters News office in Moscow.
