RUSSIA: A piece of paper on the courtroom door had no tale to tell, writes Chris Stephen in Moscow
Russia's most sensational criminal trial was brought to a mysterious halt yesterday morning - by a single sheet of paper.
For a year and a half this city has been mesmerised by the sight of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once the country's richest tycoon with a $12 billion fortune, sitting behind bars in a tiny courthouse.
Officially Khodorkovsky (41) is charged with fraud and tax-evasion, but most here believe this is a battle between the tycoon and president Vladimir Putin.
Khodorkovsky was arrested in October 2003, shortly after he had begun to use his billions to launch a challenge to Putin in upcoming elections. Since then, he has protested his innocence from his prison cell, refusing to do a deal with prosecutors or admit guilt. He insists the charges are manufactured.
In December foreign investors got the jitters when Khodorkovsky's company, oil giant Yukos, was broken up and the main production plant sold back to the state for about half its estimated market value.
Last week US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the West would measure the strength of Russia's justice system by this week's verdict. All this guaranteed a huge audience for yesterday, when the three judges were to announce their verdict. But the little Meschansky courthouse was closed, with a piece of A4 paper stuck to the door announcing that the case had been postponed until May 16th.
No explanation was given and nobody at the courthouse or the justice ministry or the Kremlin was willing to explain why.
"I think the judge is sick, that is what I heard," said one young official at Khodorkovsky's press centre in rented offices near the court. His lawyers believe the delay came from Putin, nervous that it would leave him facing awkward questions when world leaders gather in Moscow on May 9th to remember VE Day.
Opposition MP Sergei Mitrokin of the Yabloko Party said: "By May 16th all the leaders attending the celebrations will have gone home and then the authorities will pronounce their sentence."
Putin was not commenting; he was on a state visit to Egypt.
This mystery comes at a bad time for investors. Five years ago Putin came to power promising that the anchor of prosperity, the courts, would be respected through a "dictatorship of the law".
Yet corruption remains prevalent, as recent opinion polls show many people fear the police more than criminals, complaining of rampant bribe-taking.
Meanwhile, other companies are starting to feel the heat. Even BP, the star of Russia's foreign investors now drilling for oil in Siberia, is worried. Two weeks ago it was suddenly slapped with a billion-dollar tax bill.
Khodorkovsky's legal team insist their man is innocent, pointing out that alone among Russia's mega-companies, Yukos was for years filing western-style audited accounts.
A few dozen mostly young people showed up outside the courthouse. One woman held a picture of the bespectacled tycoon in one hand and handed out daffodils with the other. Another woman marched around with a picture of her hero stamped, Che-Guevara style, on a big red flag.
But most Muscovites stayed away - the truth is that Khodorkovsky does not make a very good human rights symbol.
The tycoon may have filed western-style accounts, but he has yet to explain how he persuaded Russia's government to gift him a $2 billion oil company for a tenth of the price back in the 1990s, nor why he was able to bid for it while also owning the bank handling the auction.
For his part, Russia's president has kept a studied silence about the case, but he is feeling the pressure. His administration is under fire from the West over Chechnya and the pro-democracy demonstrations in Ukraine and Kyrgystan. At home, he is blamed for cutting benefits to pensioners, causing waves of "grey protests".
On Monday, trying to calm business nerves, he used his annual state-of-the-union address to promise: "Tax authorities have no rights to terrorise business."
Yet the case is one that Putin must win - if Khodorkovsky is found innocent, the Kremlin will gain a powerful and angry enemy, with a major axe to grind after spending 18 months behind bars.