As Russia’s leading human rights lawyer, Karinna Moskalenko battles regularly with the Kremlin in defence of Vladimir Putin’s critics. Now the Kremlin is trying to destroy her career.

The Prosecutor-General’s Office is seeking to have Mrs Moskalenko disbarred on extraordinary grounds: it accuses her of negligence in defending Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oligarch jailed by the Kremlin in its campaign to dismantle his oil company, Yukos.

Khodorkovsky has made no complaint. Indeed, in a statement from his cell in the Siberian penal colony of Chita, he declared himself “fully satisfied” with Mrs Moskalenko’s work.

Nevertheless, a disciplinary panel of the Moscow Bar Association will meet tomorrow to decide her fate. The Prosecutor-General’s application is backed by the Ministry of Justice, adding to the pressure on Mrs Moskalenko, 53.

She has earned a formidable reputation for defeating the Russian state at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. She and her team at Moscow’s International Protection Centre have won 27 cases and have more than 100 applications pending.

Apart from Khodorkovsky, Mrs Moskalenko represents Garry Kasparov, the chess champion leading an anti-Putin campaign, torture victims in Chechnya, relatives of those killed in the 2004 Beslan school siege and survivors of the hostage crisis at the Moscow Nord-Ost theatre in 2002.

Alexander Litvinenko, the dissident murdered in London in November, was briefly a client in 2002 after he was convicted in absentia by a Moscow court.

Mrs Moskalenko told The Times: “Our complaints are always made against Russia but we are not against Russia. We are against the wrong actions of the Russian authorities. We are for Russia and Russia’s people and for improving its legal system.”

Her efforts brought an award from the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights last year. She was elected to the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), based in Switzerland, in 2003.

“The case against her has no basis in terms of her conduct as a lawyer,” Roisin Pillay, the ICJ’s spokeswoman said. “She is being victimised for representing people that the Government is opposed to, and that’s a concern for the rule of law in Russia.”

Khodorkovsky’s lawyers have endured repeated intimidation from the authorities since his arrest in 2003. He was jailed for nine years, but faced new charges in February that could keep him in prison for another 15 years.

Mrs Moskalenko said that the attempt to disbar her began after she complained to the Prosecutor-General about being detained in Chita in February as she hurried to return to Moscow to be with her teenage son, who had fallen ill.

She was accused of acting against Khodorkovsky’s interests and of negligence in examining case files with him. Khodorkovsky rejected both charges, saying that Mrs Moskalenko represented him at the European Court and that others defended him in Russia.

She is under no illusion about the real motivation for the attack after the failure so far of a two-year investigation by Russia’s tax police to force the closure of her law centre.

Mrs Moskalenko is relying on the independence of her legal peers, who form a majority on the disciplinary panel, to save her career tomorrow. But she fears that the Prosecutor-General will appeal to the courts, where it will be easier to secure a decision against her.

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