I met this tall, think young man with black hair around 15 years ago. At that time he was, I think 25 years old and had graduated from Moscow State University and Harvard.

It is difficult to have a real talent not catch your eye. Some time later, Vasily Aleksanyan became the head of legal department at YUKOS, the Russia’s second largest, and then largest, oil company.

He grew with the company. A bright, sharp man, he had a hand in enormous international contracts worth billions of dollars, litigated in Russian and foreign courts and participated in creating modern electronic technology for organising management solutions (what our government is planning to have by 2012, in other words more than a decade later!).

Vasily was no saint. He loved partying, nice cars and women. All in all, he loved life in all its respects, all the while remaining a strong and absolutely reliable professional.

When I was imprisoned, Vasily became my attorney and fought for me in court. He could guess, but did not believe, that despite his efforts the writing was on the wall. Later on, with that same energy and reckless bravery, he tried to save YUKOS.

Vasily was being threatened since he truly was making it difficult for the company to be plundered; however, be a lawyer through and through, he didn’t completely believe in the justice system’s lawlessness. He had hoped that, by acting within the law, he would be able to defend the rights of thousands of YUKOS shareholders.

His arrest and imprisonment on trumped-up charges were the price he paid for believing in the law and the due process of law. Even in prison, however, he remained the same: a lawyer and a person of honour.

By that time he was fatally ill stemming from after a car accident, when he was given a blood transfusion with HIV-infected blood. After that, his vision began to deteriorate, and in prison he became blind; nonetheless, he as always meticulously read – and then listened to after going completely blind – thick legal documents and made comments on them. He made comments that could have saved someone from fictitious charges. At least they could have if we actually had a fair judicial system.

He was offered a deal that would have saved him:  
- You give the needed testimony against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, and we will free you and let you get treatment. You really need this!
- What testimony?
- The testimony that we tell you to give…

He refused to give false testimony, and thus was stripped the treatment he so ever much needed. Two years in prison was enough for the illness to take its full course, right up to the final, fatal stage.

Are these not human beings?

Only after nothing could be done and under pressure from a furious public was Vasily transferred to a hospital. Here, they locked him, an ill patient undergoing chemotherapy, to his bed with handcuffs!

Are these not human beings?

He did not give up. He fought it out in court, while the judges time after time refused to throw out the case in order to give Vasily a chance to get civilised treatment. The judges refused to release him from prison, not believing the medical personnel that said he was dying...

Only after the public’s outrage created enough pressure was this mockery put to an end.

But then, knowing that he couldn’t be saved, the judges and prosecutor tried to reinstate the judicial process. Why these bureaucrats would need this is clear: they have to deliver high performance.

Are these not human beings?

Vasily all the way until the end tried to help whom he felt responsible for: the responsibility of a friend and a lawyer. He tried to dictate legal commentary, offered to give testimony and interview. The last time he did so was just a month before his difficult death.

This young man turned out to be a Man, for whom honour is worth more than his own life. A life that he loved so much.

He had his life taken away from him, and he was taken away from his family. The ones who took him away from us are those he has indicated by name. In Russia, however, only God is their judge.

He could have done so much more...

May his memory live on forever.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Novaya Gazeta