October 3 marks the first anniversary of the passing of Vasily Alexanyan, a Yukos lawyer who died as a result of abuse and cruel mistreatment by the Russian authorities during a prolonged period of pretrial detention.  Alexanyan, who was denied critical medical care in order to “medically blackmail” him into perjury against his friends and colleagues, will always be remembered as someone who steadfastly refused to bend before the threats of the state, and ended up paying with his life for his beliefs.

It is a testament to the politically motivated nature of the Yukos affair when the Kremlin began targeting the lawyers acting on behalf of Yukos, depriving the main defendants, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, of their right to counsel.  After many midnight raids of offices, seizures of property, threats of disbarment and even credible intimations of violence, many lawyers were forced to flee the country and seek asylum abroad.  Alexanyan, who served as General Counsel to Yukos, stayed behind to defend the company with the full knowledge that the government would move aggressively.

He was abruptly arrested on Oct. 6, 2006, implausibly charged with tax fraud and embezzlement (Alexanyan had only held his Vice President position for a very brief period, as shareholders attempted to protect company assets from seizure).  Shortly after his imprisonment, it was discovered that he had contracted HIV-AIDS from a blood transfusion he received following a car accident.  Having discovered this medical ailment, the government quickly moved the prisoner to the most squalid conditions possible, including a freezing cold and damp cell (at 2 degrees Celsius with literally with water and mildew running down the walls), and continued to deny him adequate doctor visits or medication.

Many observers have compared the treatment of Alexanyan to the murder of Sergei Magnitsky, another lawyer working for Hermitage who was abused and tortured by Russia’s prison authorities with as of yet no consequences.  The state’s cruelty toward Alexanyan knew no boundaries.  The prison conditions were horrifically substandard.  He was denied medical examinations, while later the prosecutors would tell the courts that he “refused” medication and had been given satisfactory medical evaluations.  Alexanyan was also offered a very clear quid pro quo deal by Prosecutor Salavat Karimov, who was preparing the second case against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev – if Alexanyan would testify against his friends and colleagues, he would be given all the life-saving anti-retrovirals he requires.

Speaking to the Supreme Court via video feed from his cell, Alexanyan challenged the court to spend one day suffering the pain he has been subjected to:  “Whoever is asserting this, I would like to let him have my body for 10 minutes, so he could experience the hellish torment I’m experiencing. Only a person bereft of reason could say something like that. So he’d be climbing the walls from the pain and no medicine would help him. Let him have enough of a conscience to look me in the eye. (…) All this time, by the way, not only were they not prescribing medical treatment for me, they didn’t even want to take me out for repeat tests. This is torture, you understand, torture! Natural, legally authorized torture! I am refusing medical treatment! This is complete drivel! You’re now seeing me via television relay, apparently, in black-and-white depiction. If you were to see [me] right now in the courtroom, you would be horrified.”

He continued, “I ask the Supreme Court to manifest…to show that there is justice in Russia, that Russian citizens don’t need to go dying on the steps of the European Court in order to attain any justice. That it can be attained here, in Moscow, in your [court]room, show this. How long can we go on paving the country with bones?”

In early 2008, Mikhail Khodorkovsky initiated a hunger strike to call attention to the torture of Alexanyan, which eventually resulted in the government agreeing to move the prisoner to a clinic. But it was too late. His health began to seriously deteriorate in November 2008, when he had to undergo surgery to remove his spleen.

The international community was horrified by the treatment of Alexanyan.  On December 22, 2008 the European Court of Human Rights did make a request – which was ignored – for Russia to immediately release the tortured prisoner after their investigations found that Russia had violated his rights.  According to the ECHR order, the “national authorities had failed to take sufficient care of the applicant’s health. (…) This had undermined his dignity and entailed particularly acute hardship, causing suffering beyond that inevitably associated with a prison sentence and the illnesses he suffered from, which amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment.”

On June 24, 2010, the prosecutors finally dropped their case against Alexanyan after the maximum amount of time under law had transpired since the charges.  But by that point, a death sentence had already been issued by the state.  At this point his physical health had been ravaged by the state’ torture, having contracted tuberculosis, having lost his eyesight, and a severely weakened immune system.  To boot, the Kremlin decided to impose a staggering $1.8 million bail bond on his release, which Alexanyan called “a cynical derision of law and common sense.”  On December 8, 2010, Alexanyan finally was able to go home, to spend his last days with family and friends.

When Vasily passed away on October 3, 2011, many friends, relatives, and colleagues came forward to celebrate his memory.  His close friend and lawyer Anton Drel published a eulogy in Vedomosti, celebrating Alexanyan’s remarkable strength and presence:  “He tried to live every day like it was his last; he was just the sort of person about whom one could say: live beautifully, long, and… die young.”

There was little doubt that Alexanyan’s life had been taken in a criminal act.  Human rights activist Lev Ponomarev told the Financial Times, “He would still be alive if he hadn’t spent a long time in solitary confinement and had received medical treatment in time.”  Activst Valery Borshchyov echoed the feelings of many when he said the death of Alexanyan “was practically a murder.”

Recognizing the first anniversary of his passing, Mikhail Khodorovsky published a statement on his Russian website, commenting that Alexanyan was “a courageous man and a good guy. He did not make a deal with his conscience and paid for it with his life. I, like many others, will remember it forever.”