Moscow
Jailed ex-billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky said this week that his prison ordeal is making him a better person. “Having lost my property and external freedom, I have entered an entirely new level of spiritual freedom, become independent from everything apart from my conscience and beliefs,” he told Zavtra, an extreme-nationalist newspaper. Khodorkovsky was sentenced in May to nine years in prison for fraud and tax evasion in what Western observers called a show trial. The government promptly confiscated Khodorkovsky’s lucrative oil company, Yukos. The former oligarch now plans to run for parliament from his prison cell. “I don’t regret what has happened,” he said. “Every day I spend behind bars is a political act in itself.”
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