By Conor Humphries and Aydar Buribayev
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Moscow court refused a request by lawyers defending fallen Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky to change the prosecutors at the start of his trial on fresh charges of embezzling $25 billion (18 billion pounds) on Tuesday.
The fate of Khodorkovsky, 45, 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 watched for any signs of a milder tone under Putin's successor Dmitry Medvedev.
The court also rejected Khodorkovsky's requests to be freed from an "inhuman" glass-walled cage where he sat on Tuesday to face the new charges, which could add another 22 years to his current eight-year sentence.
"We said the cage was unacceptable from the point of view of international standards on conversing with the accused," defence lawyer Karina Moskalenko said.
She described the court's rejection of all her client's requests as "alarming."
Armed guards brought Khodorkovsky, wearing jeans and a coat, 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."
Inside the glass-walled cage, Khodorkovsky joked and smiled with business partner Platon Lebedev. With greying hair, he appeared much older than when he last appeared in public.
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.
"You simply cannot underestimate the importance of the Khodorkovsky case -- this process will show where Russia is going," said Robert Amsterdam, a defence lawyer for Khodorkovsky, from London.
Khodorkovsky, who was sentenced to eight years imprisonment in 2005, 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.
KREMLIN TANDEM TEST
Analysts say the new trial poses an awkward dilemma for the ruling "tandem" of Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev and will show who really rules Russia.
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.
Khodorkovsky, 45, who was once ranked as Russia's richest man, was brought from a prison in Chita near the Chinese border to face the charges at a preliminary court hearing in Moscow.
Prosecutors say Khodorkovsky embezzled 900 billion roubles ($25 billion) and laundered 500 billion roubles. His lawyers say the new charges are absurd because their client is charged with stealing more oil from the YUKOS oil company that he controlled than it produced during the years in question.
"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," Leonid Nevzlin, one of Khodorkovsky's closest advisers, said in a statement from Israel where he fled several years ago.
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)
