Russian Court trims Khodorkovsky’s Jail Term to 2016

    A Moscow appeals court upheld the second conviction of oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, but it also reduced his 14-year prison sentence by one year.
    Yesterday’s decision means that Khodorkovsky, 47, once Russia’s richest man, will remain in prison until 2016. He was convicted in December of stealing tens of billions of dollars’ worth of oil from his own company and laundering the proceeds, a politically tainted ruling that drew strong international condemnation.
    Khodorkovsky was seen as a political threat to Vladimir Putin, who was president in 2003 when Khodorkovsky was arrested and who remains Russia’s most powerful leader now that he is prime minister.
    During the one-day appeal hearing at Moscow City Court, Khodorkovsky poured scorn on the judges who had written the verdict, a lengthy summary of the trial that spelled out his guilt.
    “From which dusty basement did they dig out the venomous Stalinist spider who wrote that gibberish?’’ Khodorkovsky asked, visibly agitated as he paced around the glass-and-steel defendant’s cage.
    In wrapping up the defense’s case yesterday, lawyer Yuri Shmidt pointed to numerous contradictions in the verdict, saying they showed that the judge who presided over the 18-month trial could not have written the ruling on his own.
    Khodorkovsky’s also aimed barbs at President Dmitry Medvedev, who succeeded Putin in 2008 on promises to strengthen the rule of law as part of an effort to modernize Russia’s economy, according to the Associated Press.