Khodorkovsky flies to Germany after release

Russia's most famous prisoner and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky today walked out of jail after more than 10 years behind bars, immediately flying to Germany following his surprise pardon by President Vladimir Putin.
The former oil tycoon was quitely escorted out of his prison in northwestern Russia in a low-key operation, depriving journalists of any image of the former convict leaving his remote penal colony.
In a dizzying succession of events, several hours later Khodorkovsky flew to Germany, the prison service said, with the RAPSI legal news agency saying he was on his way to Berlin.
"After his release he flew to Germany where his mother is undergoing treatment," the prison service said in a statement, saying he had requested permission to travel abroad.

Khodorkovsky's ailing mother Marina, 79, has been undergoing treatment in Germany, but her current whereabouts are unclear. A source told AFP his wife Inna is currently in Switzerland.
Putin pardoned Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, a day after stunning the country last day by saying he asked for clemency on humanitarian grounds as his mother was ill.

"Guided by humanitarian principles, I decree that Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky... Should be pardoned and freed from any further punishment in the form of imprisonment," said the decree signed by Putin today.
Less than three hours after the publication of the decree, his lawyers confirmed that Khodorkovsky, 50, had left his prison colony in the town of Segezha in the Karelia region.

The release drew the curtain on the highest profile criminal case in post-Soviet Russia which has harmed the country's investment climate and become a symbol for the selective persecution of Kremlin foes under Putin.
By accident or design, the release has coincided with a major amnesty for prisoners convicted of non-violent crimes that is expected to see the Pussy Riot punk rockers freed in the next days.
Thirty foreign and Russian Greenpeace activists, arrested on hooliganism charges after their protest against Arctic oil drilling are also expected to escape prosecution.
"It's an unprecedented case in the history of modern Russia," said political analyst Valeria Kasamara. "It was not worked out what to say and how -- that is why they are hiding him."

"It has not sunk in yet," Marina Khodorkovskaya, the former tycoon's mother, told Russian state television. Speaking in a shaky voice, she said she was taking sedatives to calm her nerves.