Russia: Khodorkovsky Freed After Putin Pardon

Mikhail Khodorkovsky has reportedly arrived in Germany after being pardoned by Russian president Vladimir Putin and freed from a Russian prison camp.

The former oil tycoon was released within an hour of the Kremlin publishing a decree and boarded a flight to Berlin, where his ill mother is being treated.

Mr Putin surprised journalists at the end of his annual end-of-year news conference on Thursday by announcing that he was planning to pardon Mr Khodorkovsky, who had been in jail for 10 years.

"Guided by humanitarian principles, I decree that Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky ... should be pardoned and freed from any further punishment in the form of imprisonment," his decreee said.

Mr Putin meets Mr Khodorkovsky at the Kremlin in May 2001

"This decree comes into force from the day of its signing."

Mr Khodorkovsky, the former Yukos oil tycoon, has been in prison since 2003 after being convicted in two trials on charges including fraud and embezzlement.

Human rights groups criticised both trials and have said they considered the 50-year-old a political prisoner.

The circumstances surrounding the pardon remained unclear.

Mr Khodorkovsky has been held at a prison camp in Segezha, northwest Russia

Mr Khodorkovsky, once the richest man in Russia, previously said he would not request one because he would be seen to be admitting guilt.

However, the newspaper Kommersant reported that he changed his mind after a meeting with Russian security services, who raised the possibility of a third trial and warned him that his mother's health was deteriorating.

"This conversation, which was conducted without lawyers, forced Mr Khodorkovsky to turn to the president," the article said.

Mr Khodorkovsky gained considerable political influence under President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s as one of the so-called "oligarchs" who surrounded the ailing leader.

Pussy Riot's Maria Altokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova are set to be freed

However, when Mr Putin became president in 2000, their influence quickly faded.

Economic and political analysts said the announcement was an attempt by Russia to improve its human rights record and international image ahead of the Winter Olympics in February.

Meanwhile, a Kremlin-backed bill is set to end the ordeal of a group of Greenpeace activists who were arrested near an Arctic oil rig in September, and allow two Pussy Riot protesters to be freed.

The amnesty laws would allow investigators to drop charges against the 30 activists, including six Britons who have not been allowed to return home.

Protesters Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, who were jailed for two years after a demonstration in a Moscow cathedral, would be released early.

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