MOSCOW - Russian prison authorities are denying regular washes to the critically ill former vice president of the Yukos oil giant held in a Moscow hospital, his lawyer alleged Thursday.
Vasily Aleksanian, who was transferred from his jail to a hospital earlier this month after an international human rights campaign, is suffering from AIDS and tuberculosis, lawyer Drew Holiner said.
"Prison authorities are not allowing him to take a shower even though the doctors say that it is essential that he does so on a daily basis," Holiner said in a statement, which was written in Russian.
Officials from Russia's prison service could not be reached for comment.
This is not the first time that Aleksanian, 36, a Harvard-educated lawyer, has criticised conditions in the hospital, complaining earlier this month that he was being chained to the hospital bed during treatment.
Aleksanian is facing trial on charges of alleged fraud and embezzlement, which he has denied, as part of a series of investigations that has destroyed Yukos, formerly the biggest oil company in Russia.
The earlier campaign for him to be granted medical treatment culminated in a two-week hunger strike by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the imprisoned former chief executive of Yukos.
A bitter critic of the Kremlin, Khodorkovsky -- once Russia's richest man -- is currently serving an eight-year sentence in Siberia.
dt/ag
02/28/2008 22:29 GMT