If parole is turned down, Khodorkovsky will have the right to reapply in six months.
Amid heavy drizzle outside the Chita Drama Theater, half a dozencampaigners on Wednesday gathered signatures for a petition to freejailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky on the eve of his parole hearing.
Atotal of 107 people signed up in two hours while they were filmed froma nearby rooftop by a group of men, whom the campaigners suspected ofbeing security service officers.
A court in this east Siberiancity, more than 6,000 kilometers east of Moscow, will consider Thursdaywhether to grant the country’s most prominent prisoner his freedom, ashe has served out more than half of his eight-year sentence on tax andfraud charges.”We want the court to take these signatures into consideration whenmaking a decision,” said Marina Savvateyeva, deputy head of a localKhodorkovsky support group, as she stood in the rain on Chita’sTeatralnaya Ploshschad, asking passers-by to sign the petition.
Khodorkovsky,once the country’s richest man, fell from grace after crossingthen-President Vladimir Putin over corruption and Khodorkovsky’sfinancing of political parties. His Yukos oil firm was bankrupted underthe weight of $33 billion in back tax charges.
Thursday’s rulingis being seen as a litmus test for Putin’s successor, Dmitry Medvedev,who has promised to uphold the rule of law and vowed to defeat what hecalls “legal nihilism.”