Khodorkovsky Put in Solitary Confinement for Rules Breach

First he lost his oil empire, then most of his money, then his freedom. Now prison officials have taken away Mikhail Khodorkovsky's right to human company by putting him in solitary confinement.

Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, has been moved to solitary confinement at the Siberian penal colony where he is serving nine years for fraud after breaking prison rules for a second time.

His press centre, Khodorkovsky.ru, reported the move to solitary confinement yesterday. It said he would spend five days alone after guards decided some of the papers he had in his cell were prohibited.

"There is no doubt that this is revenge for Khodorkovsky standing up for his legitimate rights," his lawyer Yury Schmidt told the site.

Meanwhile, an extended meeting with Khodorkovsky's parents scheduled for next Monday had been cancelled due to repairs in the prison meeting room, the statement said.

Since December, the website added, Khodorkovsky has left his assigned workplace in the jail where he is required to sew clothes and has complained to local courts in an effort to be reassigned to work teaching inmates.

The website said the papers found on him were the ministry of justice's rules for prisoner conduct, which are not materials normally prohibited in Russian prisons.

The former oil billionaire and critic of Russia's President Vladimir Putin was arrested on a Siberian airport runway in October 2003.

His energy empire was then picked apart after government claims that he owed tax and he was sentenced to nine years for fraud last year. He has been sent to Colony 14/10 near the far-eastern Siberian town of Krasnokamensk.