MOSCOW, March 17, 2008 (AFP) - Russian prison authorities said Monday the former vice-president of oil group Yukos, suffering from cancer and AIDS, who was moved from his jail to hospital, will no longer be chained to his bed.
Last month, a Moscow court suspended Vasily Aleksanian's jail term for embezzlement on the grounds of his illness. Aleksanian had for months been asking to be hospitalised, attracting support from human rights groups and other advocates.
His lawyers have complained about the permanent presence of a guard in his room and said he was attached with a chain to his bed, with his handcuffs only undone for their visits.
"He was attached to his bed by a chain one or two times," said Yuri Kalinine, head of the penal administration, according to Interfax news agency.
"We have installed a grill (at the window) and lifted the chain," he said.
The prison authorities added that Aleksanian was only chained to his bed when his guard had to leave the room.
Aleksanian's lawyers were not available for comment.
Detained since 2006, the former head of Yukos's legal service said his imprisonment, and that of other Yukos executives, was politically motivated.
In a letter published in December 2007, he said Russian authorities had abused their power and "driven him to the edge of his coffin" with the "absurd and endless lynching of all those who had been near or far from Yukos."
Former Yukos chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky -- serving an eight-year sentence in a Siberian prison -- had carried out a hunger strike in solidarity with Aleksanian's plight.
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