Russia says will move AIDS prisoner to hospital

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's prison service bowed tointernational pressure on Thursday by saying it would transferVasily Alexanian, an inmate gravely ill with HIV/AIDS, to aspecialist clinic.

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has issuedthree instructions to the Russian authorities to move Alexanianto a hospital. He has said he will die unless he receiveslife-saving treatment only available outside prison.

Valery Zaitsev, deputy spokesman for the federal prisonsservice, said Alexanian, 36, would be transferred to a clinic"in the near future".

He did not say where Alexanian would be treated. "That willbe determined by the doctors, not by us. They will establishthe diagnosis and decide what clinic he needs to be sent to,"he said by telephone.

Zaitsev said Alexanian would be under guard by prisonofficers while in the clinic.

A former vice-president of the now-defunct Yukos oilcompany, Alexanian says he is nearly blind, has cancer of thelymph nodes and suspected tuberculosis.

He has accused prosecutors of deliberately denying himadequate treatment to blackmail him into giving evidenceagainst Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is in aSiberian jail and may face trial on a new set of charges thisyear.

Yelena Lvova, one of Alexanian's legal team, told Reutersshe had not been informed of the decision to move her client toa clinic.

"We have been hearing about this for four months. Now thequestion is when it happens. He should be moved to a clinicimmediately," she said.

Alexanian is on trial on charges of fraud and tax evasion.Prosecutors deny mistreating him. They have accused him ofrefusing to accept the medical treatment offered to him inprison in a ploy to delay his trial.

His supporters say he has been caught up in a witch-huntagainst Khodorkovsky, who was imprisoned in what was widelyregarded as a Kremlin campaign to punish the tycoon for hispolitical ambitions.

On Wednesday, a Moscow district court ordered thatAlexanian's trial be suspended while he received treatment. Butit rejected a defence request for him to be released on bail.

Late last month Khodorkovsky announced he was going onhunger strike to show solidarity with Alexanian. One ofAlexanian's brothers works as a translator in the ReutersMoscow bureau.

(Editing by Robert Woodward)