By Conor Humphries and Aydar Buribayev
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Police arrested 10 supporters shouting "freedom for political prisoners" as fallen Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky appeared in court on Tuesday on new charges of embezzlement and money laundering.
The fate of Khodorkovsky, an oil tycoon who fell foul of the Kremlin under former President Vladimir Putin and was jailed in Siberia for tax evasion and fraud, is being closely watched for signs of a milder tone under Putin's successor Dmitry Medvedev.
Armed guards brought Khodorkovsky, wearing jeans and carrying a black briefcase, in a van to the Khamovnichesky court in Moscow -- the first time he has appeared in public in the capital since 2005. A supporter threw white roses towards him.
Police detained about 10 Khodorkovsky supporters outside the court as they shouted "Freedom for political prisoners, freedom for Mikhail Khodorkovsky."
Khodorkovsky, who was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to eight years imprisonment, has always insisted he is not guilty.
In a glass cage in the court, Khodorkovsky joked and smiled with business partner Platon Lebedev, though he appeared much older than when he last appeared in public.
A court spokeswoman said the hearing was closed to the public and reporters were allowed only briefly to film and photograph the defendants. Police sealed off the area around the courtroom and security was tight.
Analysts say the fresh trial poses an awkward dilemma for the ruling "tandem" of Putin and Medvedev.
If Khodorkovsky is convicted on new charges, Medvedev will be perceived as suffering a setback in his campaign for the rule of law. If the ex-oligarch is acquitted, the hardliners surrounding Putin will be seen to have lost.
"If the trial stops, Medvedev will show by this that he is the real leader. But this is utopia right now," activist Roman Dobrokhotov told Reuters outside the courtroom as police bundled his protesting colleagues into a waiting van.
"This new trial is being staged to prove that Putin fights those whom he considers his foes till the end," said Dobrokhotov, who rose to notoriety last year when he heckled Medvedev in the Kremlin.
The 45-year-old former businessman, once ranked as Russia's richest man, was brought to Moscow from a prison in Chita near the Chinese border to face the new charges at a preliminary court hearing in the capital.
Prosecutors say Khodorkovsky embezzled 900 billion roubles (18 billion pounds) and laundered 500 billion roubles, charges that could keep him in jail for 22 years more if found guilty.
His lawyers say their client is a political prisoner and the new charges are absurd. They say he is charged with stealing more oil from the YUKOS oil company that he controlled than it produced during the years in question.
KREMLIN TEST CASE?
Khodorkovsky says he is the victim of corrupt officials who feared his political ambitions and wanted to carve up his YUKOS business empire, which produced more oil than OPEC member Qatar.
His lawyers say the trial is a test case of who really rules Russia, where Prime Minister Putin still wields enormous power.
"We have no illusions regarding the new trial," Leonid Nevzlin, one of Khodorkovsky's closest former advisers, said in a statement from Israel where he fled several years ago.
"As long as Putin and his people control the Kremlin, they'll do everything they can to keep Khodorkovsky in jail for as long as possible," said Nevzlin, who was last year found guilty in absentia by a Moscow court of organising five murders. He has repeatedly denied the charges.
Khodorkovsky became one of Russia's most powerful businessmen, widely known as oligarchs because of their immense wealth and influence, by buying state assets cheaply and trading commodities in the chaos after the Soviet Union collapsed.
His arrest in 2003 allowed the Kremlin to clip the oligarchs' wings and bring them under tight political control by sending a message that anyone who stepped out of line could follow in Khodorkovsky's footsteps to Siberia.
(Writing by Guy Faulconbridge, Editing by Dominic Evans)
