Vasily Aleksanyan - in Prison

In Prison

After his arrest Aleksanyan started a hunger strike, insisting that his arrest without court hearings was illegal. He aborted his strike on 27 April 2006.

During Aleksanyan's imprisonment, his health rapidly deteriorated due to HIV-related illnesses. He became almost blind and developed cancer of the liver with metastasis into the lymph nodes. He also became ill with tuberculosis.

Despite the grave medical situation demanding urgent antiretroviral treatment and chemotherapy in a hospital, he was denied both. The prosecutors also ignored three injunctions by the European Court of Human Rights on 27 November 2007, on 6 December 2007 and on 20 December 2007. According to Aleksanyan, the prosecutors are demanding false evidence against other Yukos executives from him before starting his medical treatment. On 26 December Aleksanyan made public a statement asking for help from human rights advocates.

Eleven days into a hunger strike in his favour by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Aleksanyan was transferred from a pre-trial prison to an oncological hospital on 8 February 2008. On October 20, 2008 Simonovsky Court of Moscow approved continuing pre-trial detention of Alexanyan despite his grave illnesses (he had cancer, tuberculosis and AIDS and his spleen was surgically removed).

On December 8, 2008 Moscow City Court reversed the decision of Simonovsky Court and decided to release Alexanyan under a bond of 50 million rubles (approximately $2 million). He was to be released after the money was paid. Human rights advocates Lev Ponomaryov and Lyudmila Alexeyeva welcomed the court decision but expressed concern whether Alexanyan would be able to pay this sum of money.