yuri schmidt lawyer who defended khodorkovsky

by Miss Virginia Spinka Published 2 years ago Updated 1 year ago 6 min read

Yuri Schmidt, 69, a human rights lawyer for over five decades, has been a defense lawyer for the imprisoned former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky since 2004. In an interview during a visit to Berlin to receive a German human rights award, Schmidt said Putin's Russia was a danger "not only for Russia but for the world as well."

Schmidt was born in Leningrad. He was a member of the Mikhail Khodorkovsky defense team from 2004, and headed the legal team for several years before his death in 2013, following a long battle with cancer.

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Who is Yury Schmidt?

Tributes are flooding in to the renowned Russian human rights lawyer Yury Schmidt, who has died aged 75. Schmidt devoted much of his career to defending critics of the Russian government and others accused of political crimes, from environmental whistleblowers to oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Kristina Gorelik celebrates his life.

Who was the first person to represent a defendant in a politically motivated case?

According to Schmidt himself, the first time he represented a defendant in a politically motivated case was in 1989, when the eminent Soviet physicist and dissident Andrey Sakharov asked him to take on the case of Arkady Manucharov, an Armenian secessionist leader in Nagorno-Karabakh . Then, almost immediately afterwards, he defended the then head of the Republic of South Ossetia, Torez Kulumbegov, accused by the Georgian government of separatism and incitement to riot. And in 1993 acted for the Uzbek dissident Abdumanob Pulatov, who was charged with insulting his country’s president Islam Karimov.

yuri schmidt lawyer who defended khodorkovsky

Who is Yury Schmidt?

Who was the first person to represent a defendant in a politically motivated case?

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