Members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg today highlighted Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s decade of injustice during a debate on a resolution on the continuing deterioration in the rule of law in Russia.

The adopted resolution, which comes less than two weeks before Khodorkovsky marks his 50th birthday, said that his politically-motivated imprisonment was part of a pattern that “amounts to a systematic failure of the Russian state to uphold the rule of law and to deliver justice to its citizens”.

The resolution was highly critical of “politically motivated trials, unfair procedures and failures to investigate serious crimes” in Russia, and urged the Russian law enforcement and judicial authorities “to carry out their duties in an effective, impartial and independent manner in order to bring perpetrators to justice.”

As well as the imprisonment of Khodorkovsky, the cases of Anna Politkovskaya, Sergei Magnitsky and Alexei Navalny featured prominently in the resolution.

The detention, torture and premature death of former Yukos legal counsel Vasily Alexanian was also mentioned in the resolutions tabled by the Liberal and Green political groups.

These group resolutions further drew attention to Khodorkovsky’s designation as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience.

In the debate ahead of the vote on the resolution, MEPs expressed dismay over the crackdown on civil society currently underway, demanding an end to harassment and intimidation of NGOs.

MEPs also highlighted concerns about Russia’s increasingly repressive and corrupt regime.

Polish MEP Marek Migalski questioned whether Russia deserved to be considered a strategic partner of the EU if it continued to ignore the injustices meted out to Khodorkovsky.

German MEP Bernd Posselt called the Russian regime ‘brutal and inhumane’, and said that many of those who objected to the regime were either dead, like Magnitsky and Politkovskatya, or rotting in prison like Khodorkovsky, whom he said had been a victim of politically-motivated trials.

Eija-Riitta Korhola MEP, who represents Finland, said that the Khodorkovsky case and others mentioned in the resolution represented a systemic deficiency because they were ‘just a few examples of Russia flouting basic principles of the rule of law’.

Responding for the European Commission, Janusz Lewandowski mentioned Khodorkovsky’s upcoming appeal hearing by the Russian Supreme Court, due in early August, and said that the EU was monitoring this development closely.

He also pointed out that Khodorkovsky’s imprisonment was raised directly with Russian officials as part of the EU-Russia human rights consultations in May.

Commissioner Lewandowski admitted that the problem appeared to be that in a number of cases, Russian courts were incapable of acting independently of any political interference.

He said the rule of law should be a priority area for EU-Russia relations.