MOSCOW, Feb 18, 2008 (AFP) - A jailed former Russian oil executive who won the right to hospital treatment for cancer and AIDS in a bitter court battle is chained to his sick-bed, one of his lawyers said Monday.
Former Yukos vice-president Vasily Aleksanian, 36, moved earlier this month from a Moscow prison to a hospital, also has a round-the-clock guard inside his hospital room, Guevorg Danguiane told Echo Moscow radio station.
"(Aleksanian) is attached to his bed by a chain which allows him to move half a metre (1.6 feet) and the handcuffs are only removed before he meets with his lawyers," Danguiane said.
Aleksanian won the right to hospital treatment after a judge suspended for health reasons his detention since 2006 on charges of embezzlement and other crimes he claims are politically motivated.
His lawyers had said he was denied treatment for many months, with Aleksanian saying the Russian authorities had driven him "to the edge of the grave" in an "absurd and endless lynching" of former Yukos executives. They have also complained of being denied access to their hospitalised client.
Aleksanian was moved earlier this month amid a two-week hunger strike by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the imprisoned former chief executive of Yukos leading international efforts to highlight the case.
A bitter critic of the Kremlin, Khodorkovsky -- once Russia's richest man -- is currently serving an eight-year sentence in Siberia.
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