The French newspaper Le Monde has paid tribute to legendary human rights lawyer and member of Khodorkovsky’s team, Yuri Schmidt, who died on January 12, 2013. In an article entitled, “Yuri Schmidt, Russian lawyer for human rights” Marie Jego, Moscow based Le Monde correspondent and above all Yuri’s friend, writes that “today, all of the Russian intelligentsia cries for him”, as he was, in the words of the liberal economist Yevgeny Gontmahker, one of the last voices of the Russian moral conscience”.

Le Monde also published the speech Schmidt gave during his 75th birthday celebrations, in which he said: “There are two eras, before and after Putin. What we live today is very similar to what happened in the 1960s. We backtracked, first slowly with the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003, and now we run great strides towards our “glorious past“.

The article offers some biographical detail of Schmidt’s life and career, culminating in his role as a defence lawyer for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a role he performed until the very end of his life.

“Man of conviction, refined intellectual, Yuri Schmidt spent the last years of his life on the defence of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oil tycoon sentenced to fourteen years in prison for tax evasion after a travesty of justice to excuse the extensive plundering of his property.

On October 27, 2010, (Yuri) appears in person at the Moscow’s Khamovnichesky court, where the last act of the trial of (Khodorkovsky was played out). Pale and terribly emaciated because of cancer, the lawyer explained brilliantly the judicial harassment by the Kremlin of the man who was once the richest in Russia, but who is now its most famous prisoner. “His argument, devoted to the political aspects of the case was undoubtedly the strongest and clearest of all,” said his colleague Vadim Klyuvgant present at the court that day.”

The original version of the article (in French) can be found on Le Monde website