MOSCOW - A key US congressman who has pushed to have Russia excluded from the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations condemned the sentencing here Tuesday of Yukos oil founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, saying it underscored anti-democratic trends in Russia.
"It seems that this political trial, tried before this kangaroo court, has come to a shameful conclusion," Representative Tom Lantos told journalists outside the courthouse shortly after judges sentenced Khodorkovsky to nine years in prison on fraud and tax evastion charges.
"Obviously the conclusion of this trial was predetermined politically."
Lantos, the senior Democratic member of the House of Representatives' international relations committee, is one of several influential US lawmakers who have drafted legislation urging the US government to seek the exclusion of Russia from the G8.
The White House has made clear on numerous occasions that it currently opposes such an idea.
Lantos said however that the US Congress "will watch with great interest the appeal process."
He said that when former Russian president Boris Yeltsin was invited to join what was then the Group of Seven, it was because the West was showing "confidence that Russia was moving in a democratic direction.
"It is clear to the Congress of the United States that movement has been in the opposite direction," he said.
Lantos was in Moscow as part of a five-member US congressional delegation on a routine visit.
05/31/2005 10:53 GMT