Will WikiLeaks unravel the American 'secret government'?

[David Guyatt]

I suspect what we are seeing here are the arguments his lawyers will use to resist extradition.

But my own guess is that he probably would die in the US if extradited. Probably in prison in a brawl, or similar....

[Peter Lemkin]

I suspect what we are seeing here are the arguments his lawyers will use to resist extradition.

But my own guess is that he probably would die in the US if extradited. Probably in prison in a brawl, or similar....

I agree...he would likely not even make it to trial [if they even were to grant him a trial...now an 'extended privilege' of the Empire to the few - unlike as the Constitution mandates to all!

I also have to disagree with Assange that the UK wouldn't extradite him....the Poodle does as asked....for a biscuit and to not be put in the 'doghouse'. Democracy, Truth, Justice, International-UK-US Law be damned! What he says is true...IF [and ONLY IF] the Sheeple of the UK raise a very vocal 'stink' would he not be deported. It is not up to legal decisions - but politics and the UK [sorry if I offend anyone] is only IMO second to the USA in violating international law and norms.

I am also worried about Manning's chances of survival if he was and even if he was not the source of some of the Wikileaks materials. We are now in the stage, similar to the early days of the Brown Shirts, when deaths came suddenly, without rule of law, and without accountability.........ah, yes, there are the vineyard of 'fig-leaves'...but they are only that.

[Peter Lemkin]

HERE

[Peter Lemkin]

Le Monde names WikiLeaks' Julian Assange Man of the Year
Submitted by skdadl on Fri, 12/24/2010 - 22:42

Le Monde Magazine: WikiLeaks: défis et limites de la transparence (WikiLeaks: challenges and limits of transparency)

"Julian Assange homme de l'année? Time Magazine a hésité, puis lui a préféré Mark Zuckerberg, le père de Facebook. L'homme de WikiLeaks, ou l'homme de Facebook? Le Monde a hésité aussi, mettant en plus dans la balance une femme exemplaire, qui n'a créé ni site pour fuites géantes ni réseau social, mais qui inspire tout un peuple par son idéal et son courage, Aung San Suu Kyi. Puis nous avons choisi Julian Assange un choix confirmé par celui des lecteurs du Monde.fr."

(Julian Assange: man of the year? Time Magazine hesitated, then chose instead Mark Zuckerberg, father of Facebook. The man of WikiLeaks, or the man of Facebook? Le Monde also hesitated, balancing as well an exemplary woman who has created neither a giant site for leaks nor a social-networking giant but who has inspired an entire people by her ideals and her courage, Aung San Suu Kyi. Finally we have chosen Julian Assange, a choice confirmed by the readers of Le Monde.fr.)

Photo credit: Le Monde

Read more (French)

[David Guyatt]

Unlike Time Magazine then! :jawdrop:

[Peter Lemkin]

By GINGER THOMPSON and SCOTT SHANE
Published: December 25, 2010 NYT

WASHINGTON The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic cables.

State's Secrets

Articles in this series examine American diplomatic cables as a window on relations with the rest of the world in an age of war and terrorism.

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In far greater detail than previously seen, the cables, from the cache obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to some news organizations, offer glimpses of drug agents balancing diplomacy and law enforcement in places where it can be hard to tell the politicians from the traffickers, and where drug rings are themselves mini-states whose wealth and violence permit them to run roughshod over struggling governments.

Diplomats recorded unforgettable vignettes from the largely unseen war on drugs:

¶In Panama, an urgent BlackBerry message from the president to the American ambassador demanded that the D.E.A. go after his political enemies: "I need help with tapping phones."

¶In Sierra Leone, a major cocaine-trafficking prosecution was almost upended by the attorney general's attempt to solicit $2.5 million in bribes.

¶In Guinea, the country's biggest narcotics kingpin turned out to be the president's son, and diplomats discovered that before the police destroyed a huge narcotics seizure, the drugs had been replaced by flour.

¶Leaders of Mexico's beleaguered military issued private pleas for closer collaboration with the drug agency, confessing that they had little faith in their own country's police forces.

¶Cables from Myanmar, the target of strict United States sanctions, describe the drug agency informants' reporting both on how the military junta enriches itself with drug money and on the political activities of the junta's opponents.

Officials of the D.E.A. and the State Department declined to discuss what they said was information that should never have been made public.

Like many of the cables made public in recent weeks, those describing the drug war do not offer large disclosures. Rather, it is the details that add up to a clearer picture of the corrupting influence of big traffickers, the tricky game of figuring out which foreign officials are actually controlled by drug lords, and the story of how an entrepreneurial agency operating in the shadows of the F.B.I. has become something more than a drug agency. The D.E.A. now has 87 offices in 63 countries and close partnerships with governments that keep the Central Intelligence Agency at arm's length.

Because of the ubiquity of the drug scourge, today's D.E.A. has access to foreign governments, including those, like Nicaragua's and Venezuela's, that have strained diplomatic relations with the United States. Many are eager to take advantage of the agency's drug detection and wiretapping technologies.

In some countries, the collaboration appears to work well, with the drug agency providing intelligence that has helped bring down traffickers, and even entire cartels. But the victories can come at a high price, according to the cables, which describe scores of D.E.A. informants and a handful of agents who have been killed in Mexico and Afghanistan.

In Venezuela, the local intelligence service turned the tables on the D.E.A., infiltrating its operations, sabotaging equipment and hiring a computer hacker to intercept American Embassy e-mails, the cables report.

And as the drug agency has expanded its eavesdropping operations to keep up with cartels, it has faced repeated pressure to redirect its counternarcotics surveillance to local concerns, provoking tensions with some of Washington's closest allies.

Sticky Situations

Cables written in February by American diplomats in Paraguay, for example, described the D.E.A.'s pushing back against requests from that country's government to help spy on an insurgent group, known as the Paraguayan People's Army, or the EPP, the initials of its name in Spanish. The leftist group, suspected of having ties to the Colombian rebel group FARC, had conducted several high-profile kidnappings and was making a small fortune in ransoms.

When American diplomats refused to give Paraguay access to the drug agency's wiretapping system, Interior Minister Rafael Filizzola threatened to shut it down, saying: "Counternarcotics are important, but won't topple our government. The EPP could."

The D.E.A. faced even more intense pressure last year from Panama, whose right-leaning president, Ricardo Martinelli, demanded that the agency allow him to use its wiretapping program known as Matador to spy on leftist political enemies he believed were plotting to kill him.

The United States, according to the cables, worried that Mr. Martinelli, a supermarket magnate, "made no distinction between legitimate security targets and political enemies," refused, igniting tensions that went on for months.

Mr. Martinelli, who the cables said possessed a "penchant for bullying and blackmail," retaliated by proposing a law that would have ended the D.E.A.'s work with specially vetted police units. Then he tried to subvert the drug agency's control over the program by assigning nonvetted officers to the counternarcotics unit.

And when the United States pushed back against those attempts moving the Matador system into the offices of the politically independent attorney general Mr. Martinelli threatened to expel the drug agency from the country altogether, saying other countries, like Israel, would be happy to comply with his intelligence requests.

Eventually, according to the cables, American diplomats began wondering about Mr. Martinelli's motivations. Did he really want the D.E.A. to disrupt plots by his adversaries, or was he trying to keep the agency from learning about corruption among his relatives and friends?

One cable asserted that Mr. Martinelli's cousin helped smuggle tens of millions of dollars in drug proceeds through Panama's main airport every month. Another noted, "There is no reason to believe there will be fewer acts of corruption in this government than in any past government."

As the standoff continued, the cables indicate that the United States proposed suspending the Matador program, rather than submitting to Mr. Martinelli's demands. (American officials say the program was suspended, but the British took over the wiretapping program and have shared the intelligence with the United States.)

In a statement on Saturday, the government of Panama said that it regretted "the bad interpretation by United States authorities of a request for help made to directly confront crime and drug trafficking." It said that Panama would continue its efforts to stop organized crime and emphasized that Panama continued to have "excellent relations with the United States."

Meanwhile in Paraguay, according to the cables, the United States acquiesced, agreeing to allow the authorities there to use D.E.A. wiretaps for antikidnapping investigations, as long as they were approved by Paraguay's Supreme Court.

"We have carefully navigated this very sensitive and politically sticky situation," one cable said. "It appears that we have no other viable choice."

A Larger Mandate

Created in 1973, the D.E.A. has steadily built its international turf, an expansion primarily driven by the multinational nature of the drug trade, but also by forces within the agency seeking a larger mandate. Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the agency's leaders have cited what they describe as an expanding nexus between drugs and terrorism in further building its overseas presence.

In Afghanistan, for example, "DEA officials have become convinced that no daylight' exists between drug traffickers at the highest level and Taliban insurgents," Karen Tandy, then the agency's administrator, told European Union officials in a 2007 briefing, according to a cable from Brussels.

Ms. Tandy described an agency informant's recording of a meeting in Nangarhar Province between 9 Taliban members and 11 drug traffickers to coordinate their financial support for the insurgency, and she said the agency was trying to put a "security belt" around Afghanistan to block the import of chemicals for heroin processing. The agency was embedding its officers in military units around Afghanistan, she said. In 2007 alone, the D.E.A. opened new bureaus in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, as well as in three Mexican cities.

Cables describe lengthy negotiations over the extradition to the United States of the two notorious arms dealers wanted by the D.E.A. as it reached beyond pure counternarcotics cases: Monzer al-Kassar, a Syrian arrested in Spain, and Viktor Bout, a Russian arrested in Thailand. Both men were charged with agreeing to illegal arms sales to informants posing as weapons buyers for Colombian rebels. Notably, neither man was charged with violating narcotics laws.

Late last year in a D.E.A. case, three men from Mali accused of plotting to transport tons of cocaine across northwest Africa were charged under a narco-terrorism statute added to the law in 2006, and they were linked to both Al Qaeda and its North African affiliate, called Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

The men themselves had claimed the terrorism link, according to the D.E.A., though officials told The New York Times that they had no independent corroboration of the Qaeda connections. Experts on the desert regions of North Africa, long a route for smuggling between Africa and Europe, are divided about whether Al Qaeda operatives play a significant role in the drug trade, and some skeptics note that adding "terrorism" to any case can draw additional investigative resources and impress a jury.

New Routes for Graft

Most times, however, the agency's expansion seems driven more by external forces than internal ones, with traffickers opening new routes to accommodate new markets. As Mexican cartels take control of drug shipments from South America to the United States, Colombian cartels have begun moving cocaine through West Africa to Europe.

The cables offer a portrait of the staggering effect on Mali, whose deserts have been littered with abandoned airplanes including at least one Boeing 727 and Ghana, where traffickers easily smuggle drugs through an airport's "VVIP (Very Very Important Person) lounge."

Top-to-bottom corruption in many West African countries made it hard for diplomats to know whom to trust. In one 2008 case in Sierra Leone, President Ernest Bai Koroma moved to prosecute and extradite three South American traffickers seized with about 1,500 pounds of cocaine, while his attorney general was accused of offering to release them for $2.5 million in bribes.

In Nigeria, the D.E.A. reported a couple of years earlier that diplomats at the Liberian Embassy were using official vehicles to transport drugs across the border because they were not getting paid by their war-torn government and "had to fend for themselves."

A May 2008 cable from Guinea described a kind of heart-to-heart conversation about the drug trade between the American ambassador, Phillip Carter III, and Guinea's prime minister, Lansana Kouyaté. At one point, the cable said, Mr. Kouyaté "visibly slumped in his chair" and acknowledged that Guinea's most powerful drug trafficker was Ousmane Conté, the son of Lansana Conté, then the president. (After the death of his father, Mr. Conté went to prison.)

A few days later, diplomats reported evidence that the corruption ran much deeper inside the Guinean government than the president's son. In a colorfully written cable with chapters titled "Excuses, Excuses, Excuses" and "Theatrical Production" diplomats described attending what was billed as a drug bonfire that had been staged by the Guinean government to demonstrate its commitment to combating the drug trade.

Senior Guinean officials, including the country's drug czar, the chief of police and the justice minister, watched as officers set fire to what the government claimed was about 350 pounds of marijuana and 860 pounds of cocaine, valued at $6.5 million.

In reality, American diplomats wrote, the whole incineration was a sham. Informants had previously told the embassy that Guinean authorities replaced the cocaine with manioc flour, proving, the diplomats wrote, "that narco-corruption has contaminated" the government of Guinea "at the highest levels."

And it did not take the D.E.A.'s sophisticated intelligence techniques to figure out the truth. The cable reported that even the ambassador's driver sniffed out a hoax.

"I know the smell of burning marijuana," the driver said. "And I didn't smell anything."

Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting.

[Peter Lemkin]

Julian Assange to use £1m book deals for legal fight

WikiLeaks founder says he had to sell rights to autobiography to cover legal costs and keep website afloat

Paul Lewis
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 26 December 2010 18.17 GMT

Julian Assange says costs for WikiLeaks and his defence against allegations of sexual misconduct are approaching £500,000. Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images

The founder of the WikiLeaks website, Julian Assange, has said he expects to earn more than £1m from book deals.

Assange, who achieved global notoriety after his whistleblower website began releasing more than a quarter of a million diplomatic cables, said he would use the money for legal costs.

The 39-year-old is fighting extradition to Sweden, where two women have accused him of sexual misconduct. He denies the allegations.

Since being released on bail earlier this month pending extradition proceedings, Assange has been living under virtual house arrest at Ellingham Hall, a Norfolk country mansion, from where he regularly gives media interviews.

He told the Sunday Times that he was forced to sign a deal worth more than £1m for his autobiography due to financial difficulties. "I don't want to write this book, but I have to," he said. "I have already spent £200,000 for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat."

He will reportedly receive $800,000 dollars from Alfred A Knopf, his American publisher, while a British deal with Canongate is said to be worth £325,000. An estimated £1.1m will be generated from the deal, including serialisation, he said.

Previously Assange told the Guardian that WikiLeaks does not have enough money to pay its legal bills, even though "a lot of generous lawyers have donated their time to us".

Legal costs for WikiLeaks and his own defence were approaching £500,000, he said. The decisions by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal to stop processing donations have cost the organisation £425,000, enough to fund WikiLeaks' publishing operations for six months. At its peak the organisation was receiving £85,000 a day, he said.

Assange has said that his greatest concern is not the pending extradition request to Sweden, but a potential prosecution in the United States over his released of leaked data.

There is no evidence of an imminent US move to indict him, but there have been calls by senior figures for his arrest. The US vice-president, Joe Biden, has likened Assange to a "hi-tech terrorist".

Assange has said he believes the Obama administration is "trying to strike a plea deal" with Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old intelligence officer and alleged source of the diplomatic cables.

The US attorney general, Eric Holder, wants to indict Assange as a co-conspirator and is also examining "computer hacking statutes and support for terrorism", Assange claims.

Assange's extradition hearing has been scheduled for 6-7 February.

Someone posed a VERY interesting question....when the book is out and certainly at Amazon and other such, will one be able to buy it using Visa, Mastercard and PayPal? :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Peter Lemkin]

WikiLeaks: rule of law in Mikhail Khodorkovsky trial merely 'gloss'

US dismisses Russian efforts to show due process in tycoon's trial, whose verdict is due today, as 'lipstick on a political pig'

Tom Parfitt in Moscow
The Guardian, Monday 27 December 2010

Leaked WikiLeaks cable about the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose picture is brandished at a rally in Moscow, reaffirm US diplomats' view of Russia as a 'kleptocratic mafia state'. Photograph: Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters

The trial of Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky shows the Kremlin preserves a "cynical system where political enemies are eliminated with impunity", US diplomats say in classified cables released by WikiLeaks today.

Attempts by the Russian government to demonstrate the rule of law is being respected during Khodorkovsky's prosecution are "lipstick on a political pig", says a communique to Washington from the US embassy in Moscow in December 2009.

Khodorkovsky, 47, an oil tycoon who was arrested in 2003 and sentenced to eight years in jail for fraud two years later, will appear in court in Moscow today to hear the verdict in his second trial on embezzlement charges. Supporters of the man once Russia's richest say the Kremlin ordered the prosecutions in revenge for his funding of opposition parties.

Khodorkovsky could get up to six more years in jail at the end of his current sentence in October next year, if convicted. His business partner, Platon Lebedev, faces the same punishment.

While US officials have already publicly criticised the trial, which began in March last year, the baldness of the language in the secret cables is striking.

Writing to Washington in December last year, a political officer in the US embassy in Moscow noted that one international legal expert believes the trial judge is trying to give Khodorkovsky's defence lawyers a chance. However, in a withering assessment, the officer adds: "The fact that legal procedures are apparently being meticulously followed in a case whose motivation is clearly political may appear paradoxical.

"It shows the effort that the GOR [government of Russia] is willing to expend in order to save face, in this case by applying a superficial rule-of-law gloss to a cynical system where political enemies are eliminated with impunity."

The diplomat's assessment reaffirms those made in US cables released earlier by WikiLeaks, in which Russia is described as a kleptocratic "mafia state" in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are inextricably linked.

It refers obliquely to a meeting in 2000 when Vladimir Putin, then still president, met Khodorkovksy and 20 other oligarchs and reportedly warned them to stay out of politics in return for their businesses being left in peace.

"There is a widespread understanding," writes the diplomat, "that Khodorkovsky violated the tacit rules of the game: if you keep out of politics, you can line your pockets as much as you desire."

The officer adds: "It is not lost on either elite or mainstream Russians that the GOR has applied a double standard to the illegal activities of 1990s oligarchs; if it were otherwise, virtually every other oligarch would be on trial alongside Khodorkovsky and Lebedev." At his annual TV question and answer session earlier this month, Putin, now prime minister, brushed off criticism off the trial. Russia had "one of the most humane court systems in the world". He added: "It is my conviction that a thief should be in jail."

Khodorkovsky's Yukos oil company was confiscated and sold to state-controlled firms after his conviction. He fired back on Friday in a letter to Putin published in a Russian newspaper. He pitied Putin, a "not-young person, so upbeat and so alone before a boundless and remorseless country". The premier, said Khodorkovsky, was helmsman of a galley which "sails right over people's destinies" and "over which, more and more, the citizens of Russia seem to see a black pirate flag flying".

Khodorkovksy also mocked Putin's recent television appearances with his new dog, Buffy. "Love of dogs is the only sincere, good feeling that pierces through the icy armour shell of the 'national symbol' of the beginning of the 2000s," he wrote. "A love of dogs has become a substitute for a love of people."

The verdict in Khodorkovsky's trial was due on 15 December but a note pinned on the door of Moscow's Khamovnichesky court that morning said it had been delayed until tomorrow. Some analysts believe the delay was deliberate, in order to deflect media attention over the holiday period.

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are accused of embezzling the entire crude oil production of Yukos over a six-year period.

A source close to Khodorkovsky predicted he "would likely remain in prison as long as the Putin administration is in power,", according to the US cables released today. Putin is widely expected to return as president in 2012 and could serve two more terms, until 2024.

The judge is expected to spend several days reading the verdict.

[Peter Lemkin]

Monday, March 09, 2009
Wikileaks writers killed in Kenya
By News Release :: 7651 Views :: National Politics, World News, World Politics

From Wikileaks: Two Wikileaks-related senior human rights activists have been assassinated. We ask for your assistance.

On Thursday afternoon March 5, Oscar Kamau Kingara, director of the Kenyan based Oscar legal aid Foundation, and its programme coordinator, John Paul Oulo, were shot at close range in their car less than a mile from President Kibaki's residence. The two were on their way to a meeting at the Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights.

Both had been investigating extrajudicial assassinations by the Kenyan Police. Part of their work forms the basis of the "Cry of Blood" report Wikileaks released on November 1 last year and subsequent followups, including the UN indictment last month.

Since 2007 the Oscar foundation had documented 6,452 "enforced disappearances" by police and 1,721 extrajudicial killings. The murders come just two weeks after United Nations Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial killings Professor Philip Alston called on on Kenya's Attorney General and Police Commissioner to be sacked over murders by pollice.

On 18 February 2009, the Oscar Foundation presented its findings for use in a parliamentary debate. The Oscar Foundation vehicle was blocked by a minibus and a Mitsubishi Pajero vehicle, both of which had been following them along State house road. Several men were in the two vehicles.

Two men got out, approached the vehicle of Oscar Kamau Kingara and John Paul Oulu, and shot them through the windows at close range. According to eyewitnesses, the driver of the minibus was in police uniform whilst the other men were wearing suits. The closest eyewitness to the incident was shot in the leg and later taken away by policemen.

A coalition of civil society organizations released a statement blaming police for the murders. "These were very decent men who had done more work than anybody in examining police killings," said Cyprian Nyamwamu, the executive director of the National Convention Executive Council, a non-governmental organization advocating social and economic reform. "I have no doubt that is why they were killed."

Police said that students from the nearby University of Nairobi moved Oulo's body into a hostel and one student was shot dead when officers tried to retrieve it. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights have demanded an immediate extral investigation into the deaths. The US Ambassador to Kenya has offered the Kenyan government the services of the FBI. The offer has been declined.

Those with intelligence assets in the area, or non-public information on Police Commissioner General Hussien Ali or other suspects, please contact us via wl-kenya@sunshinepress.org Alternatively help fund our investigation of these murders: https://secure.wikileaks.org/

If you are in a position to signficantly fund a reward for conviction or apprehension of the assassins and those behind them, contact: wl-kenya@sunshinepress.org

[Peter Lemkin]

WikiLeaks: rule of law in Mikhail Khodorkovsky trial merely 'gloss'

US dismisses Russian efforts to show due process in tycoon's trial, whose verdict is due today, as 'lipstick on a political pig'

Tom Parfitt in Moscow
The Guardian, Monday 27 December 2010

Leaked WikiLeaks cable about the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose picture is brandished at a rally in Moscow, reaffirm US diplomats' view of Russia as a 'kleptocratic mafia state'. Photograph: Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters

The trial of Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky shows the Kremlin preserves a "cynical system where political enemies are eliminated with impunity", US diplomats say in classified cables released by WikiLeaks today.

Attempts by the Russian government to demonstrate the rule of law is being respected during Khodorkovsky's prosecution are "lipstick on a political pig", says a communique to Washington from the US embassy in Moscow in December 2009.

Khodorkovsky, 47, an oil tycoon who was arrested in 2003 and sentenced to eight years in jail for fraud two years later, will appear in court in Moscow today to hear the verdict in his second trial on embezzlement charges. Supporters of the man once Russia's richest say the Kremlin ordered the prosecutions in revenge for his funding of opposition parties.

Khodorkovsky could get up to six more years in jail at the end of his current sentence in October next year, if convicted. His business partner, Platon Lebedev, faces the same punishment.

While US officials have already publicly criticised the trial, which began in March last year, the baldness of the language in the secret cables is striking.

Writing to Washington in December last year, a political officer in the US embassy in Moscow noted that one international legal expert believes the trial judge is trying to give Khodorkovsky's defence lawyers a chance. However, in a withering assessment, the officer adds: "The fact that legal procedures are apparently being meticulously followed in a case whose motivation is clearly political may appear paradoxical.

"It shows the effort that the GOR [government of Russia] is willing to expend in order to save face, in this case by applying a superficial rule-of-law gloss to a cynical system where political enemies are eliminated with impunity."

The diplomat's assessment reaffirms those made in US cables released earlier by WikiLeaks, in which Russia is described as a kleptocratic "mafia state" in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are inextricably linked.

It refers obliquely to a meeting in 2000 when Vladimir Putin, then still president, met Khodorkovksy and 20 other oligarchs and reportedly warned them to stay out of politics in return for their businesses being left in peace.

"There is a widespread understanding," writes the diplomat, "that Khodorkovsky violated the tacit rules of the game: if you keep out of politics, you can line your pockets as much as you desire."

The officer adds: "It is not lost on either elite or mainstream Russians that the GOR has applied a double standard to the illegal activities of 1990s oligarchs; if it were otherwise, virtually every other oligarch would be on trial alongside Khodorkovsky and Lebedev." At his annual TV question and answer session earlier this month, Putin, now prime minister, brushed off criticism off the trial. Russia had "one of the most humane court systems in the world". He added: "It is my conviction that a thief should be in jail."

Khodorkovsky's Yukos oil company was confiscated and sold to state-controlled firms after his conviction. He fired back on Friday in a letter to Putin published in a Russian newspaper. He pitied Putin, a "not-young person, so upbeat and so alone before a boundless and remorseless country". The premier, said Khodorkovsky, was helmsman of a galley which "sails right over people's destinies" and "over which, more and more, the citizens of Russia seem to see a black pirate flag flying".

Khodorkovksy also mocked Putin's recent television appearances with his new dog, Buffy. "Love of dogs is the only sincere, good feeling that pierces through the icy armour shell of the 'national symbol' of the beginning of the 2000s," he wrote. "A love of dogs has become a substitute for a love of people."

The verdict in Khodorkovsky's trial was due on 15 December but a note pinned on the door of Moscow's Khamovnichesky court that morning said it had been delayed until tomorrow. Some analysts believe the delay was deliberate, in order to deflect media attention over the holiday period.

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are accused of embezzling the entire crude oil production of Yukos over a six-year period.

A source close to Khodorkovsky predicted he "would likely remain in prison as long as the Putin administration is in power,", according to the US cables released today. Putin is widely expected to return as president in 2012 and could serve two more terms, until 2024.

The judge is expected to spend several days reading the verdict.