STATEMENT BY WILLIAM BROWDER ON MIKHAIL KHODORKOVSKY’S RELEASE

December 20, 2013

Mikhail Khodor­kovsky was freed today by his hostage tak­ers after being kept 10 years in cap­tiv­i­ty at the per­son­al direc­tion of Vladimir Putin. 

I can’t imag­ine the duress he must have suf­fered by his false impris­on­ment and I’m delight­ed and relieved for him and his fam­i­ly that he is final­ly free. 

But we should­n’t for­get that Putin stole ten years of a man’s life for a polit­i­cal vendetta. 

We should­n’t for­get that Mikhail Khodor­kovsky’s lawyer Vasi­ly Alek­sen­ian died at the age of 39 after being false­ly arrest­ed in the same vin­dic­tive case and was delib­er­ate­ly refused med­ical care while he was dying, to try to get him to tes­ti­fy against Khodorkovsky. 

We also should­n’t for­get about the thou­sands of oth­er peo­ple who have been tak­en hostage and abused by cor­rupt Russ­ian law enforce­ment offi­cials, like Sergei Mag­nit­sky who was tor­tured to death in police cus­tody after expos­ing a cor­rup­tion scheme run by senior Russ­ian officials. 

Cheap pub­lic rela­tions tac­tics to pro­mote Putin’s Sochi Olympics don’t sub­sti­tute for real jus­tice and the vic­tims whose lives were ruined and con­tin­ue to be ruined by the Putin regime. 

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