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Ill Yukos suspect granted treatment

A critically ill former Yukos oil firm executive set to be tried for embezzlement will be transferred from prison to hospital, Russian officials said yesterday, in a rare victory for human rights activists in the last months of President Vladimir Putin's rule.

"The decision has been taken to hospitalize him," a spokesman for the prison sentencing board said.

Human rights experts have accused the authorities of failing to give proper treatment to Vasily Aleksanian, 35, who is suffering from cancer and AIDS.

Campaigners, who have staged several protests in Moscow in recent days to demand hospitalization for Aleksanian, hailed the decision by the prison service.

"We are very happy that our campaign has brought this result. The main thing is for him to get proper treatment," said Tatyana Monakhova, one of nine activists who had declared a hunger strike over the case.

A lawyer for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the imprisoned former chief executive of Yukos, said on Echo of Moscow radio that the former tycoon would end a hunger strike he started last week over the case once Aleksanian was hospitalized.

In a statement, Khodorkovsky claimed that Aleksanian had been blackmailed, with the authorities offering him medical help in exchange for giving evidence against his former boss.

The dismantlement of Yukos, once Russia's biggest oil company, since 2003 on charges of massive tax fraud and embezzlement has fueled international criticism of Putin's eight-year rule, which will end after the presidential election on March 2.

The decision to hospitalize Aleksanian follows the ruling by a judge in Moscow on Wednesday to suspend his trial on embezzlement and money laundering charges so he could receive better treatment.

Drew Holiner, another of his lawyers, said in a statement that Aleksanian had been denied treatment for 14 months.

In addition, he was being held in a Moscow prison's infectious disease unit, "an incomprehensible situation since he is suffering from severe immunity deficiency," according to the statement.
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