MOSCOW, Feb 19, 2008 (AFP) - A Russian prison service spokesman justified on Tuesday the use of bed-chains on a jailed former Yukos oil executive, who is receiving treatment for cancer and AIDS in a Moscow hospital, following a complaint from his lawyers.
"Such measures are taken when his guard has to leave the room, notably during treatment," Alexander Sidorov told AFP. "This option is provided for under Russian law."
The defence team for former Yukos vice-president Vasily Aleksanian complained on Monday about the presence of a round-the-clock guard in his room, the fact that he is chained to his bed and that his handcuffs are only removed before visits by his lawyers.
Aleksanian, 36, won the right to treatment earlier this month after a long battle and a campaign by human rights groups. His lawyers said the prison service had denied him appropriate treatment for more than a year.
He has been detained since 2006 on charges of embezzlement and other crimes he claims are politically motivated.
Aleksanian, a Harvard University-educated lawyer, has said the Russian authorities have driven him "to the edge of the grave" in an "absurd and endless lynching" of former Yukos executives.
The campaign for medical treatment for him culminated in a two-week hunger strike by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the imprisoned former chief executive of Yukos.
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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