MEPs urge Putin to allow treatment for former Yukos exec

(BRUSSELS) - A group of European parliament deputies issued an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday urging him to allow hospital cancer treatment for an imprisoned Yukos oil company executive.

"The arrest of Vasily Aleksanyan and the refusal to guarantee him adequate medical treatment may cause his death," the 23 MEPs said in their letter.

"This behaviour is a grave violation of the fundamental right to life," said the parliamentarians from various political groupings including German Green Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Polish leberal Bronislaw Geremek.

A Russian court on Wednesday suspended the embezzlement and money-laundering trial of the former Yukos executive while he is treated for cancer but has turned down a call for him to be released from prison for treatment at a regular hospital.

"It's up to the doctors in the prison. The judges are not doctors. It's up to doctors to decide," the judge said.

A former vice president at Yukos, Aleksanian was arrested in April 2006 amid a legal assault by prosecutors that bankrupted the company and resulted in the imprisonment of its chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Khodorkovsky, who said the attack on Yukos was engineered to crush his political ambitions, last week went on prison hunger strike to protest the denial of treatment to Aleksanian.

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 Euro deputies appealed to Putin "on humanitarian grounds to immediately give adequate medical treatment to Vasily Aleksanyan in order to save his life and to guarantee a fair treatment to all the people who are linked to the case".

Close to Khodorkovsky's team, Alexanyan was arrested in April 2006, just days after being promoted to vice-president of Yukos.

Formerly the foremost Russian oil company, Yukos declared bankruptvy and was dismantled with some of its management convicted of fraud.

On Tuesday, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov and Soviet-era dissident Vladimir Bukovsky joined a growing chorus of protest, signing a petition calling for Aleksanian's transfer to hospital.

Khodorkovsky was convicted in 2005 of massive fraud and tax evasion and sentenced to eight years in prison after a trial that Kremlin critics said was politically motivated.