Businessman Bill Browder says he would be surprised if Vladimir Putin did not attempt to pursue a third case against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, commenting that Russian president is “scared” of releasing anyone he views as an opponent.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Khodorovsky.com as part of the Decade of Injustice video series to mark the upcoming 10th anniversary of Khodorkovsky’s arrest, Browder commented that although some Western leaders are still hesitant to confront Russia on human rights issues, there is rising “moral indignation” that may lead to positive actions.

“We’re living in a world of realpolitik where governments will say one thing to publicly to their own people about how they are upset about human rights violations, and then they will do an entirely different thing in order not to upset governments like Russia,” said Browder, who is most well known for helping sponsor the passage of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Act in the U.S. Congress, which applies visa sanctions against individual Russian officials accused of corruption and rights violations.

When Browder first introduced the idea of sanctions against officials involved on the 2009 murder of his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, he says people told him there was no chance of it happening while the Obama administration was pursuing the “reset” of relations with Russia. But Browder did find more support among U.S. lawmakers, who felt morally outraged over the way in which the Russian authorities attempted to cover up the murder of Magnitsky.

“The moral indignation overcame the appeasement strategy of the U.S. government, and eventually the Magnitsky Act was passed,” said Browder, adding that he was optimistic that the European Union could also move forward with similar legislation.

When Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were first arrested in 2003, Browder was initially supportive of the Russian government. Now he says he stands in complete solidarity with Khodorkovsky, and retracts any public statement he made about the case.

“I should start out by saying to Mikhail that I apologize for in any way supporting the way in which Putin has victimized him,” he said. “It is a shocking travesty of justice the way he has been persecuted and re-persecuted in the most obvious and unpleasant way. What I didn’t understand was that it was an attempt for Putin to become the biggest oligarch and to steal from anyone else who had any success, and he did it in the most vociferous way to Mikhail Khodorkovsky.”

Speaking about the possibility of the Russian government pursuing a third trial against Khodorkovsky in order to prevent his release in 2014, Browder said he would not be surprised.

Browder said the Russian president is “completely afraid of anybody who is his enemy. And particularly, his enemies who have been empowered the way that Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been empowered by ten years of Putin.”